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Claire Bond-Myatt The South African Insurance Industry Survey 2016 | 79

Senior Consultant, Privacy and wearable technologies
Advisory
Tel: +27 61 29346 5889 - A POPI dilemma?
Email: cbonbmyatt@@kpmg.com.au
As technology becomes less of a was estimated to increase by 2019 to a at the risk of potentially invading the
Ashleigh van utility and begins to retain intelligence whopping US$ 53 Billion1. privacy of their policyholders and users.
Kerckhoven about who we are through wearables,
organisations will begin to invest in Rapid innovations in technology, falling Security and privacy
Manager, such technologies to gain competitive costs in the unit price of devices, and Wearables present multiple attack
Technology advantage and consumer insights a general social trend toward health vectors, in that they often require
Tel: +27 82 719 4444 through what has become “human by tech-savvy consumers, are largely data to be transmitted to a processing
Email: ashleigh.vankerckhoven@kpmg.co.za telematics”. As consumers increasingly held to be the drivers of the increased application typically housed on a smart
demand meaningful, personalised, demand for health-related wearables. Ian devices such as phones, tablets or
communications and engagement Chen, a marketing manager at Freescale computers. Furthermore, applications
with their insurance providers through Semi-Conductors Sensor Division, may store the data online. Gary Davis,
seamless platforms such as wearables, believes that “by 2025, there will be the Chief Consumer Evangelist at Intel
insurers will, by necessity, be required more data generated from sensors Security believes that the data collected
to integrate wearable technologies and devices than all of the data being through wearable devices “is worth 10
into their product offering to retain generated today from every source.” times more than that of a credit card on
their competitive edge. Technological the black market.”
integration positively impacts both With increased demand comes a highly
insurers and consumers, however, competitive market with new and Reviews by various security firms2,3 have
we need to “draw a line in the sand” old entrants battling it out to produce found multiple vulnerabilities in wearable
between utility and the right to privacy better, more accurate and more useful devices and related applications, these
so as to avoid over-reaching privacy wearables. The pace of innovation and range from exposed login credentials,
invasions. demand in this space is increasingly network sniffing (wherein data
leading to concerns over privacy and transmitted from the device is visible
The wearable device market, also inadequate security safeguards as to potential attackers), to being able
known as the quantified self market, development outstrips legislative and to monitor a user’s location through
has amassed popularity in recent years. regulatory requirements. However, there the device’s tracking mechanisms
In 2015, global retail in this market was is a further commercial benefit that and public networking capability. It is
expected to reach US$ 4.5 Billion, and insurers have been quick to leverage worth considering the security risks of
wearables when linked to smart devices.

1 http://www.juniperresearch.com/press/press-releases/smart-wearables-market-to-generate-$53bn-hardware
2 http://www.forbes.com/sites/symantec/2014/08/19/how-safe-is-the-data-on-your-wearable-tech/
3 http://www.wickhill.com/blog/main-category/wearable-tech-just-how-secure-is-it/#.VWr61EaPMtl