A systematic study of security issues in Internet-of-Things (IoT)

Internet of things (IoT), also referred to as the internet of objects, is a dynamic global information network consisting of internet — connected objects. Wireless sensor networks (WSN) and RFID enabled Internet of Things finds a plethora of applications in almost all the fields such as education, health, agriculture, transportation and entertainment. Compact smart devices constitute an essential part of IoT. These compact smart devices range widely in size, energy, use, capacity and computation power. On the other hand, the integration of these smart things into the standard internet introduces several security challenges because the majority of internet technologies and protocols were not designed to support IoT. Though number of researchers have explored about such security challenges and open problems in IoT, there is a lack of a systematic study of the security challenges in the IoT landscape. This paper briefs the motivation for IoT, secured IoT layered architecture, IoT applications, Security issues with various attacks in each layer of the IoT and existing methods for providing security solutions and their limitations.

I. Introduction

The internet of things (IoT) paradigm has gained popularity in recent years. IoT does not have a unique definition. The term was first coined in 1998 and it is defined as “the internet of things allows people and things to be connected anytime, anyplace with anything and anyone, ideally using anypath/network and any service” [1]. The ultimate objective of IoT is to create “A better World for human beings”, in which objects around us know what we like, what we want and what we need and hence act accordingly without explicit instructions [2]. Based on the application domain, IoT applications can be classified into five categories such as smart medical services, smart home, smart city, smart environment and smart enterprise. The technological advancements led to an exponential increase in the number of interconnected sensing and computing devices (smart devices). As a consequence, the number of potential threats and possible effects against security or privacy of things or an individual has grown rigorously. For providing a large number of reliable services, designers stumble upon several challenges in particular, in security - related research areas. It is unfortunate that these security needs are not yet well - recognized. Hence it is necessary to study about the security threats and general privacy issues. This survey briefs about IoT security issues and various attacks. More specifically it covers •

Motivation for IoT security

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IoT applications

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IoT security issues in IoT layered architecture

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Existing survey methods for providing security, solutions and their limitations.