Security Challenges in IoT Sensor Networks

Abstract

The proliferation of the Internet has birthed the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), which is rapidly evolving and already taking strides as a universal solution to connected things. IoT transforms devices to be smart, to deliver exceptional services, and to transform everyday settings. The rapid evolution of IoT has brought along many benefits. However, IoT has also brought about ambiguity and several security concerns to IoT adopters. Security issues are the most critical challenges that need to be addressed in promoting the adoption and development of IoT systems. Addressing these challenges using a layered approach has not been adequately addressed. Several studies have proposed solutions to address security issues. Nevertheless, they have failed to propose an appropriate layered security approach or framework that addresses the majority of the security issues using a cross-layered approach. The aim of this work is to highlight security issues and challenges and provide insights into the security of IoT sensor networks. Additionally, the work intends to motivate the development of practical IoT solutions and expose areas that need further investigation. In this work, the IoT architecture, which describes the flow of communication from the device to the user interface layer in an IoT network, is used as a base to present security issues and challenges associated with each respective layer. IoT sensor networks undergo security and privacy issues such as replay, node capture attacks in the perception layer, DoS and routing attacks in the network layer and malware injection and flooding attack in the cloud layer, and access control attacks in the user interface layer. Therefore, assuring security and privacy of IoT sensor networks remains a significant challenge that needs to be addressed.