Just 8.7 per cent of homes in South Asia have Internet of Things (IoT) or "connected" devices such as Internet-enabled TVs or surveillance camera against a global average of 40 per cent, new research said on Monday.
In North America, on the other hand, 66 per cent households now have at least one IoT device, said the study conducted by cyberseucirty firm Avast in collaboration with Stanford University.
The researchers found that media devices like smart TVs are most common in seven of 11 global regions but there is significant variance otherwise.
For example, surveillance cameras are most popular in South and Southeast Asia, while work appliances prevail in East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Home assistants are present in 10 per cent of homes in North America but are yet to see significant adoption in other markets.
While nearly half of North American homes have an Internet-connected TV or streaming device, less than three per cent do in South Asia, the findings showed.
For the study, Avast scanned 83 million IoT devices in 16 million homes worldwide to understand the distribution and security profile of IoT devices by type and manufacturer.
It revealed that even with over 14,000 IoT manufacturers worldwide, 94 per cent of all IoT devices are manufactured by just 100 vendors.
"A key finding of this paper is that 94 per cent of the home IoT devices were made by fewer than 100 vendors, and half are made by just ten vendors," said Rajarshi Gupta, Head of AI at Avast.
"This puts these manufacturers in a unique position to ensure that consumers have access to devices with strong privacy and security by design," Gupta said.
Over seven per cent of all IoT devices still use obsolete protocols like FTP and Telnet, making them especially vulnerable.
The findings are scheduled to be presented at the Usenix Security Conference 2019 to be held in California, US from August 14-16. (IANS)