If you were expecting this post to reveal some special powers possessed by any member of the Romney family, please assuage your initial disappointment with your first-hand experience with click bait. As far as is publicly reported, Mitt doesn’t fancy himself a cyber guru of any estimation. He did (and probably still does) have a gift for making money, though, especially in the M&A and LBO disciplines. The firm that fostered his particular gifts was Bain & Co., and that’s where our story takes shape.

According to a recent Bain & Co. analysis, large companies plan to increase their spending on IoT security devices to over $500 million dollars over the next four years. These are the devices that monitor shop floors and warehouse facilities and transportation infrastructure and the like. That’s all fine and good, especially for the purveyors of those devices, but the implications are worth noting.

Much of the cyber buzz about IoT is generated by consumer interest, to the point that we’ll never really look at kitchen appliances or thermostats or home security systems the same way again. Commercial ventures increasing their adoption of the IoT in a big way suggests that security vulnerability will increase as new portals to organizational networks are mounted to the walls and wired into the network.

If your organization is considering an increase in IoT-enabled devices, let ICS play a part in the design and implementation, with an eye to mitigating existing and future vulnerability. After all, even Mitt Romney can’t spell security without ICS.