Opportunities and challenges of the Internet of Things

Nowadays, Internet of Things devices are everywhere and their importance and impact on society has increased significantly in the past years. On one hand, Internet of Things devices can bring multiple business opportunities as well as major positive changes to our daily lives. On the other hand, the rapid expansion of the Internet of Things universe comes with important security risks, forcing both users and companies to consider the vulnerability of these devices as well as the confidentiality of the data they generate. The main objective of this paper is to improve current understanding of the Internet of Things by providing a comprehensive overview of the main challenges and opportunities associated with these new communication technologies in various domains and industries. Secondly, the data sets from two Special Eurobarometer studies are analysed to further explore the attitudes, perceptions and experiences of European citizens towards technology and cybersecurity. Using SPSS software, one-way ANOVA and other standard statistical analysis of the data were performed. The results show that the level of awareness of cybercrimes among European citizens has increased. Another key finding is that technology users from European countries remain highly concerned about security issues online. These findings might be of interest for scholars, policymakers, service providers or firms from different industries and can further stimulate the development of local and European initiatives to address and solve these issues.