Experts at this year’s Innovation World have made the claim that consumers falling victim to data theft will be less likely than being bitten by a shark.

The claims were made at an exclusive roundtable at Software AG’s Innovation World 2015 in Las Vegas this Monday, discussing predictive analytics and the uses of data from IoT devices.

The event was headed by Dr Michael Zeller, CEO Zementis, Chris Briton, CEO Mosaic, and Giles Nelson, SVP Software AG.

Briton said: "The demands for data will become circular: the more data that is created, more business opportunities are created, more data is needed [to deliver newer opportunities]. The amount of data that is collected about us is just going to increase."

He also said that the industry still has a really long way to go before it can provide the protection as an industry that "some people say they want, but at the same time that we benefit from these capabilities that are available".

"I think it would be more likely to be bitten by a shark, than someone trying to mug me by accessing my data and knowing where I was going for a meeting."

Nelson moved on to the benefits of using data from IoT devices, like wearables, combined with predictive analytics, stating that humans will gain an enhanced lifestyle.

He said: "One big use case of predictive analytics in IoT is [between other things], healthcare.

"If someone has a mental issue, and is wearing a wearable device, when that person gets home, analytics can help to prevent tougher situations. Analytics can help to understand if someone is not moving for three days, for example."

Fighting fraud

Touching upon the benefits which the healthcare industry could gain from analytics, Zeller said that,currently, the biggest adoption of predictive analytics is found in the financial sector, driven by fraud prevention.

"Finance is an interesting one. Just look into fraud. That leads to healthcare fraud, energy fraud and so on. Healthcare is big market for us in predictive analytics.

"With predictive analytics you can look at it as looking forward to the future."

Nelson said that predictive analytics can indeed prevent fraud and other situations. "Predictive analytics want to look at the past, the present and the future, that is the next step."

Zeller said: "Once you have a stable model, then you can fully automate. We are just in the beginning of utilising this technology."