A Comparative Method for Securing Internet of Things (IoT) Devices: AES vs Simon-Speck Encryptions

Delivering information from Internet of Things (IoT) devices to a cloud server possesses several security issues, e.g. information eavesdropping, modification, and theft. Therefore, communication between IoT devices and the cloud server should be protected by encryption methods. However, there are few encryption techniques options that are suitable for the need for lightweight communication as demanded by the IoT devices. Due to these circumstances, the NSA launched an encryption algorithm for IoT named Simon and Speck, which are maximally efficient while still providing the advertised level of security, as determined by the key size. This study aims to test and compare the Simon-Speck and AES encryption algorithms and their effect on networking performance on IoT devices. The parameters in this test are delay, throughput, the efficiency of memory usage from the encryption algorithm, and the value of the avalanche effect. Experimental results show that the Speck algorithm outperforms the Simon and the AES algorithms in terms of communication delay and memory usage. Regarding the avalanche effect values, the Simon algorithm possesses the highest avalanche effect value on average against the Speck and the AES algorithms.