Internet of Things Security Survey: Solutions, Standards and Open Issues

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) extends the Internet to our everyday objects, which enables new kind of applications and services. These IoT applications face demanding technical challenges: the number of ‘things’ or objects can be very large, they can be very con-strained devices, and may need to operate on challenging and dynamic environments. However, the architecture of today’s Internet is based on many legacy protocols and technology that were not originally designed to support features like mobility or the huge and growing number of objects the Internet consists of today. Similarly, many security features of today’s Internet are additional layers built to fill up flaws in the un-derlying design. Fulfilling new technical requirements set by IoT applications requires efficient solutions designed for the IoT use from the ground up. Moreover, the imple-mentation of this new IoT technology requires interoperability and integration with tra-ditional Internet. Due to considerable technical challenges, the security is an often over-looked aspect in the emerging new IoT technology. This thesis surveys general security requirements for the entire field of IoT applica-tions. Out of the large amount of potential applications, this thesis focuses on two major IoT application fields: wireless sensor networks and vehicular ad-hoc networks. The thesis introduces example scenarios and presents major security challenges related to these areas. The common standards related to the areas are examined in the security perspective. The thesis also examines research work beyond the area of standardization in an attempt to find solutions to unanswered security challenges. The thesis aims to give an introduction to the security challenges in the IoT world and review the state of the security research through these two major IoT areas.