Smart buildings were sold on a simple promise: connect a building’s systems, from HVAC to elevators to access control, and you get lower operating costs, predictive maintenance, and a better experience for everyone inside. That promise is real, and it is why the global smart building market is projected to nearly double to 121 billion dollars by 2026, according to research from MarketsandMarkets. What gets less attention is the tradeoff that comes with all that connectivity, one that a growing number of security researchers say most facility owners have not fully reckoned with.
A recent analysis from ChesleyBrown makes the underlying point directly. Cyber physical risk is what happens when digital systems have direct control over the physical environment. The building management system, the nerve center controlling HVAC, lighting, elevators, and fire alarms, is a single point that, if compromised, does not just expose data. It can lock tenants out, disable fire suppression, or plunge an entire facility into chaos.
The scale of the vulnerability is significant. Research cited by FutureIoT found that 57 percent of IoT devices in use today are highly vulnerable due to outdated operating systems or a lack of encryption. A separate 2026 industry analysis from OxMaint went further, attributing 23 percent of critical infrastructure incidents tracked by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to building automation and control system vulnerabilities specifically.
There is also a governance gap that deserves more attention than it gets. A 2026 report from IT Security Guru, citing the UK Government’s Cyber Security Breaches Survey, found that only 14 percent of businesses formally review the cybersecurity risks tied to their immediate suppliers, and just 7 percent look further up the chain. In a smart building, that matters enormously, since third party vendors and systems integrators often retain privileged remote access for ongoing maintenance and support long after installation is complete.
The lesson underneath all of this is not that smart buildings are a mistake. It is that the security model built around them must treat every connected sensor, controller, and platform as part of the same risk surface as the corporate network, because increasingly, that is exactly what it is.