IoT security related spending is expected to skyrocket 23.7% from 2015, topping $348m in 2016.

According to Gartner’s forecast, spending is expected to keep rising as it has been since 2014 when it topped $231.86.

Over the next two years, spending on IoT security is expected to reach $433.95m in 2017, and $547.2m by 2018. This surge in spending is expected to only gather in momentum post-2020.

This is due to improved skills, organisational change and more scalable service options that will help improve business execution.

The market for IoT security products is dependent on IoT adoption by the consumer and industry sectors, according to the report.

Analysts predict that endpoint spending will be dominated by connected cars, as well as other machines and vehicles, such as heavy trucks, commercial aircraft, and farming and construction equipment.

In organisations, by 2020, IoT will be in the middle of at least 25% of indentified cyber attacks, "although IoT will account for less than 10 per cent of IT security budgets," Gartner said.

Security vendors will be challenged to provide usable IoT security features because of the limited assigned budgets for IoT and the decentralised approach to early IoT implementations in organisations.

Analysts also said vendors will focus too much on spotting vulnerabilities and exploits, rather than segmentation and other long-term means that better protect IoT.

Ruggero Contu, research director at Gartner, said: "Considerable variation exists among different industry sectors as a result of different levels of prioritisation and security awareness.

"The effort of securing IoT is expected to focus more and more on the management, analytics and provisioning of devices and their data. IoT business scenarios will require a delivery mechanism that can also grow and keep pace with requirements in monitoring, detection, access control and other security needs."

He also said that the the future of cloud-based security services is in part linked with the future of the IoT.

"In fact, the IoT’s fundamental strength in scale and presence will not be fully realised without cloud-based security services to deliver an acceptable level of operation for many organisations in a cost-effective manner," Contu said.

"By 2020, Gartner predicts that over half of all IoT implementations will use some form of cloud-based security service."