Illegal businesses, just like their legitimate counterparts, are always seeking new revenue streams, and it seems the darknet underworld has got a lucrative new revenue stream set in its crosshairs - the Internet of Things. The IoT described as a lucrative revenue stream is more than accurate, with Gartner putting the value of the IoT black market at more than $5bn by 2020.
The IoT tradable commodity is, of course, data, and with the promise of 25 billion connected 'things' by 2020, the amount of data to be sold and bought could be monumental in size.
It is not just the amount of data which raises concerns, but the type of data generated. Those 25 billion connected 'things' have the potential to collect intimate details of our everyday environment, due largely to the fact that the IoT is relevant in nearly every industry - our finances, homes, cars, even the clothes we wear can generate and transmit data.