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Digital Trust Is the Key to IoT’s Commercial Success

It seems that every month, if not week, the predictions for the magnitude of IoT and its commercial success are getting higher and higher.

There is strong confidence that in the next five years there will be a massive surge in its popularity; and not only among businesses, but regular consumers as well. For now, however, the public has been somewhat hesitant to adopt this new technology.

What seems to be the crucial ingredient is digital trust – or the current lack of. This means that the consumer has full confidence in the business in terms of digital security, performance and reliability. This concept initially became important when e-payments rose in popularity and the physical seller was removed, but this soon moved on to other technology as well. The moment smart technology came onto the market to individual customers, starting with smart phones, digital trust became just as important as any other key selling point, if not more so.

Whilst some of the IoT providers may be familiar to the consumers, the technology isn’t and this is the current problem with IoT. The bigger threats often counteract the vast opportunities, for example: a smart home system provides many benefits but also bears a high risk in terms of the data it collects on the owner. To sway the negative perception of such products, consumers should be given clear reasons to entrust the providing companies; Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat all reached popularity when users started to trust them.

Dashboard truly believes that the lack of digital trust is an obstacle that the IoT industry can overcome. There are great things in store for IoT but IoT providers should be more forthcoming and show consumers why and how to trust their products and services. There are guides on how to do this by Accenture, PwC or KPMG, to name a few or it can be formed slowly over time. Either way, digital trust is a must for every company working with IoT.