More than half of all enterprises believe the Internet of Things (IoT) is strategic to their business, but most are still taking a lax approach to security.

The findings, from an International Data Corp. (IDC) global survey carried out in July and August, suggest that enterprises are experiencing growing pains as they struggle with how best to implement the IoT into their businesses. IDC quizzed more than 4,500 enterprises across 27 countries for the survey.

Some 56 percent of enterprises indicated that the IoT is a part of their strategic plans over the next two to three years, said IDC analyst Carrie MacGillivray in a webcast where she discussed the survey findings. But adoption rates vary quite wildly depending on the industry, with financial firms (especially insurance firms) and retail leading the way.

The surprise: A number of industries that are widely assumed to benefit from IoT are moving much more cautiously. IDC’s report found that IoT adoption was on the low side in the healthcare and utility industries, mainly because of worries about compliance with regulations. Governments are also slow adopters, despite the heavy promotion of so-called “smart cities” by numerous vendors.

IDC says the biggest challenge with deploying IoT has to do with privacy and security concerns, and vendors are making little headway in either area, with early adopters of IoT largely taking an “ad hoc” approach to security. The survey found that most businesses simply secure individual devices with firewalls, though 23 percent of adopters said they’re integrating security processes into their IoT workflows.

A second challenge for IoT is finding personnel with the right skills to get things up and running, IDC said. In addition, most enterprises are yet to take advantage of “edge computing,” which IDC reckons could be one of the most important aspects of IoT. To date, most organizations that have already deployed IoT devices simply use them to collect data and send it back to their on-premises data centers or cloud for processing.

But IDC’s MacGillivray says that’s not the way to do things. Instead, she recommends that enterprises perform real-time monitoring of IoT data, something that would allow systems to take corrective action in the event of problems or failures. To do so, enterprises need to set up edge computing in IoT devices or gateways.

“The faster you process the data, the more valuable it becomes,” MacGillivray concluded.

The survey found that 43 percent of enterprises are doing at least some data processing at the edge, but clearly there’s a lot more that could be done.

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