Critical analysis of the layered and systematic approaches for understanding IoT security threats and challenges

Abstract

As an emerging technology, the Internet of Things (IoT) is revolutionizing the global economy and society. The wide adoption of IoT opens up new security and privacy challenges as well. Building efficient, secure IoT systems need a thorough understanding of the potential threats and vulnerabilities of the system. The non-uniformity in the presentation of IoT architecture poses a significant challenge in understanding security issues. Motivated by this, we present a systematic study of substantial threats and attacks based on four primary elements of the IoT ecosystem: devices, internal network services, external network services, and users. Besides, we include a detailed study of IoT malware. We examine the major security requirements and challenges to confront the devised attack categories. We believe that an IoT ecosystem can be designed efficiently and securely by adhering to the proposed requirements, including identity management, access control, end to end communication security and trust management systems.