Security Considerations in the Internet of Things Protocol Stack

Internet of Things (IoT) wireless devices has the capability to interconnect small footprint devices and its key purpose is to have seamless connection without operational barriers. It is built upon a three-layer (Perception, Transportation and Application) protocol stack architecture. A multitude of security principles must be imposed at each layer for the proper and efficient working of various IoT applications. In the forthcoming years, it is anticipated that IoT devices will be omnipresent, bringing several benefits. The intrinsic security issues in conjunction with the resource constraints in IoT devices enables the proliferation of security vulnerabilities. The absence of specifically designed IoT frameworks, specifications, and interoperability issues further exacerbate the challenges in the IoT arena. This paper conducts an investigation in IoT wireless security with a focus on the major security challenges and considerations from an IoT protocol stack perspective. The vulnerabilities in the IoT protocol stack are laid out along with a gap analysis, evaluation, and the discussion on countermeasures. At the end of this work, critical issues are highlighted with the aim of pointing towards future research directions and drawing conclusions out of it.

I. Introduction

In 1999, the initial idea of IoT and its terminology was devised by Kevin Ashton [1]. The rationale for the conceptualisation of IoT was to facilitate the connectivity of “things” (devices). It is projected that there will be approximately 20 billion interconnected IoT wireless devices with an anticipated data exchange rate that is in the range of 40 Zettabytes towards the end of 2020 [2], [3].