The global AI in IoT market has grown rapidly within the last year, with its value reaching $4.08 billion in 2025, and forecast to reach $6.45 billion by 2035. This progress reflects a wider industry shift, as with the rise of AI organizations are increasingly looking towards a more intelligent and connected future to achieve more from their IoT deployments.
Senior Product Manager at Wireless Logic.
Building additional defenses with AI-powered IoT security
The nature of the IoT can be complex, with devices often operating outside traditional IT security perimeters and in globally distributed environments. Within this landscape, connected devices now form the backbone of daily operations, from energy and healthcare to retail and manufacturing. As digitalization increases, so too will the critical functions that depend on connected devices.
Importantly, as deployments accelerate, so too does the potential IoT attack surface area. Due to the interconnected nature of the IoT, each device acts as a potential entry point for cybercriminals. With the UK government reporting the annual cost of cyberattacks as £14.7 billion annually, it is crucial that the entire IoT deployment is secure.
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While private IP addressing and private APN approaches are useful in limiting exposure, they offer limited visibility into device behavior once traffic is flowing, particularly as deployments grow more complex.
AI, however, can see what may have previously been missed. Security has become a key area that can be elevated by AI-powered anomaly and threat detection, which detects behavior such as suspicious IPs, remote code execution, device backdoors or an abnormal port connection. This threat detection enables organizations to quickly identify the first sign of a cyberattack.
AI can even help identify the nature of attacks, including distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) and man-in-the-middle (MiTM) attacks, and device takeovers. By flagging irregularities in real time and enabling rapid corrective action, AI strengthens IoT security and supports more effective risk management, helping organizations avoid operational disruption, financial loss and reputational damage.
AI unlocks the value of IoT data
Beyond security concerns emanating from the IoT’s fragmented landscape, organizations may also struggle with data management and deriving meaningful analysis across the IoT’s web of networks, devices, cloud environments and enterprise processes.
The IoT constantly collects and transmits vast quantities of information, with a single internet-connected security camera generating around 300 GB of data per month. When these connected devices are multiplied and deployed globally on a much larger scale, organizations can be left with an overwhelming amount of data that can be difficult to utilize effectively.
Additionally, the role of the IoT is evolving. Whilst historically the IoT has purely had the role of connecting devices and gathering and transmitting data, there is growing industry pressure for intelligent solutions to inform decision-making and drive outcomes. Enterprises are now seeking more effective solutions to extract meaningful insights from IoT information, and without this, they will fail to unlock the true value of their data.
AI offers a promising solution to these challenges. AI-ready infrastructure is being increasingly prioritized by enterprises to support the collection, transmission, processing and integration of data into systems to enable AI-driven insights. The intelligent analysis AI offers enables patterns and trends in device fleets to be identified and analyzed more efficiently to help reduce manual intervention and lower costs.
Through advanced analytics and machine learning, AIoT can help organizations make better use of their data across the entire fleet, transforming data into an increasingly valuable asset that drives efficiency and long-term value.
Automation supports efficiency
Vast quantities of data across the IoT also make manual intervention expensive, ineffective and time consuming. These challenges can result in performance issues escalating unnoticed, or key device faults being missed.
The analytical and automation capabilities of AI can also support through real-time monitoring, automated fault resolution and predictive maintenance. By analyzing data on device usage, lifecycle maturity and performance, AI can identify potential issues before they arise. This enables a shift from reactive to proactive operations, reduced downtime and lower operating costs.
The benefits of AI-driven analytics are industry-wide. In manufacturing, for example, AI systems can use equipment performance data to estimate maintenance costs, consequently minimizing later expenses and downtime. In industries like healthcare, predictive maintenance also helps ensure the resilience of critical services like remote patient monitoring, where it is crucial that devices remain connected.
Rules-based automation can also support policy-driven fleet management and eSIM orchestration, with many capabilities gradually moving towards greater automation. In practice, adoption is iterative, starting with defined rules and oversight, before layering in AI-driven insights such as real-time usage, performance monitoring and anomaly detection to address issues more quickly.
As automation scales further, IoT environments will be able to respond flexibly to changing conditions with reduced manual intervention.
However, it must also be noted that as this progress continues, transparency and explainability remain crucial. Organizations must understand how decisions are made, and where human oversight remains critical as they scale.
Looking ahead to intelligent connectivity
AIoT’s influence will only grow moving forward. In fact, Transforma Insights’ forecast suggests a more than six-fold increase in connections over 10 years. Managing fleets intelligently and securely at scale, with transparency at the center of operations, must become an industry priority.
Those that can successfully integrate AI with scalable connectivity will be best positioned to move beyond simply managing devices towards truly intelligent operations. In doing so, they will unlock new efficiencies, strengthen resilience and create differentiated value in the IoT.
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