Solving the Disconnect – Conceptualisation of a Unified Security Framework for the Next Generation IoT Platforms. – A. E. Ibor, A. O. Otiko and O. I. Ofem
ABSTRACT
The gradual expansion and adoption of the Internet of Things (IoTs) platforms has come with a lot of enhancements in the way we live, work and transact business. This improvement in every aspect of our lives creates new environments that come with new applications and services to enhance device to machine interactions. As more devices and machines are connected to each other, there is the likelihood of the applications and services that run on them to be vulnerable to exploitation and targeted attacks. Where vulnerabilities are easily identified and exploited by malicious users, the extent and cost of attacks can completely overrun the entire IoT platforms leading to a possible device crisis. To think out a solution in this direction requires a unified security framework that will serve as a backbone for all IoT-enabled devices and machines. The security backbone will be useful for protecting all IoT-based platforms with their respective device IDs, applications, and services. The proposed framework will implement a hierarchical security architecture that assigns security functions to devices and machines at different levels of abstraction and largely based on the level of protection required with respect to the requests initiated by the device. In the instance of an identified vulnerability, the device running the vulnerable application or service can quickly trigger a patch alert that allows the unified framework to broadcast this message to the relevant vendor(s) to fix the identified flaw(s).