When everything connects, everything’s at risk

In every corner of the modern economy, connected devices are quietly reshaping how organizations operate. From hospitals and retail outlets to factories and utilities, the Internet of Things (IoT) and operational technology (OT) have become the proverbial digital backbone of industry.

Yet as the number of connected devices heads towards 40 billion globally by 2030, their scale and complexity are testing the limits of traditional cybersecurity.

The challenge goes deeper than how many devices there are (and there are a lot!) to, more importantly, how they interact. Security firms consistently bang on about how “each new connection extends the potential attack surface”.

What that means in practice is the creation of pathways for lateral movement that can turn a single, seemingly innocuous, compromise into a full-blown breach. For the channel, helping customers detect, contain, and prevent that movement is becoming a major priority as well as a commercial opportunity.

Shifting the edge of risk

The convergence of IT, OT, and IoT means the once-clear boundaries between corporate systems and connected devices have disappeared. What was once a controlled, segmented environment has become a mesh of sensors, controllers, and endpoints, many of which were never designed with security in mind.

These devices often can’t run endpoint agents, lack patch management, and rarely support standard authentication protocols. In practical terms, that means they’re invisible to many existing security tools and sit unguarded on the same networks as sensitive systems.

It’s a scenario tailor-made for lateral movement and one that attackers have wised up to. They now focus on these softer network edges, i.e., the connected Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system, smart lift or payment terminal, where defences are weakest and visibility is often limited. Once inside, they can move around, probing the environment until they reach critical assets.

The result is a new category of risk that traditional, siloed security strategies can’t easily contain. The response has to be dynamic, integrated, and automated, capable of spotting and isolating compromised assets before threats have time to spread.

Extending compliance to the edge

This growing exposure is colliding with a tightening regulatory landscape. Frameworks such as PCI DSS 4.0 and NIS2 are forcing organizations to take a more holistic view of their digital estate. Compliance now extends to every connected device capable of touching sensitive data or supporting business-critical operations.

Many organizations are quickly discovering that their visibility into connected assets spanning all IP-enabled assets, whether managed, unmanaged, IT, OT, or IoT is incomplete, their inventories are outdated, and policies are too static to keep up with constantly shifting device populations.

This is where the channel can make a real difference. Partners are ideally placed to use their expertise to translate these compliance pressures into structured action plans. Combining visibility, segmentation, and automation will help customers stay secure and meet regulatory requirements, without adding complexity or disproportionate cost.

Visibility as the foundation

Optimal visibility requires an agentless, continuous discovery approach that identifies every device the moment it appears on the network and understands how it behaves. At this level, it can provide the intelligence needed to detect anomalies, enforce access policies, and respond to threats.

The next step is segmentation to intelligently control how devices communicate based on context, role, and risk. Dynamic segmentation is needed to allow security teams to contain threats, restrict lateral movement, and limit the potential impact of any compromise. Automation here is crucial.

By orchestrating policies and responses in real time, organizations can maintain security consistency and free IT teams from manual, repetitive work. The focus shifts from chasing alerts to enforcing proactive control.

Integrating stronger outcomes

Just as in life, isolation rarely produces the best outcomes, and isolated security tools are no different when it comes to keeping pace with modern environments. Connected asset security has to integrate into the wider infrastructure and feed device intelligence into existing systems such as SIEM, SOAR and identity platforms.

This approach accelerates detection, supports compliance reporting and enhances the return on existing security investments.

By combining visibility, segmentation and orchestration, businesses can start to close the gaps that lateral movement exploits. They gain stronger protection as well as greater operational assurance, ensuring that security controls adapt as the network evolves.

A channel opportunity hiding in plain sight

For the channel, the rise of connected environments represents a massive opportunity as most businesses are contending with these challenges in every vertical from healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, telecoms, and beyond. They all are grappling with the same question: how do we secure the unseen?

They are looking for trusted partners who can bring clarity and go beyond selling point solutions, instead offering ongoing services that provide continuous monitoring, risk reduction, and compliance assurance. Partners who can deliver visibility-as-a-service or managed segmentation are finding strong demand and recurring revenue potential.

Ultimately, this is about aligning security outcomes with business priorities. Security is not just about protecting devices; it’s about safeguarding uptime, resilience, and trust. As connected operations become the mainstay of modern business, the partners who can help customers see, control, and secure everything that connects will become indispensable.

When everything connects, everything’s at risk. But for the channel, that interconnected world provides a landscape of opportunity to guide customers through complexity, build deeper relationships, and lead the next evolution of cybersecurity.