Security In Internet Of Things

Analysis of security issues in Internet of things

Discuss about the Security in Internet of Things.

Internet of things can be defined as the developed technology that uses networked products, sensors, and systemXia et al. 2012). The large scale implementations of the advanced technology of Internet of things have resulted in developing a promising transformation in different aspects of the human life. The vast utilization of Internet of Things has brought a diverse number of potential risks in security options like unauthentic authorization, data theft and drainage of financial resources.

The essay is made on the analysis of the standard computers have faced many traditional threats with the risks in Internet of things. The essay has explained that the latest computer worms had affected not only the computers but small Internet of things devices like web cameras, smart televisions, and domestic routers.

Review of article on security issues of Internet of Things.

 “Security of the internet of things: Perspectives and challenges” by Jing et al. 2014

The author has pointed out the different perspective of the issues of security in the applications of the technology of Internet of things. It has been utilized in various aspects and activities like from the household activities. The analysis of the security problems had provided the cross-layer integration and security issues. The comparisons between the traditional network and the Internet of Things have shown the advantages of Internet of things over the traditional process of networking.

Causes of Security issues in application of Internet of things- Internet of things requires internet for doing all the operations using online feature of computer peripherals (Tankard 2015). There are risk factors associated with the activities using Internet. Due to the several risk factors, people are avoiding usage of Internet for their day to day activities. There are various factors that have considerable role in affecting the security of the Internet of things devices.

Poor Structure of Devices- The security of the Internet of things devices is very crucial as it contains information about its users (Balestrini et al. 2015). The poor configuration of security of these devices is a major cause for the security issues of the Internet of things application. They can act as point of cyber attacks that could facilitate the malfunctioning of the program and the devices. The poor configuration of the devices could expose the data and led to the infiltration of the data and information like credit card information and passwords of different payment platforms. 

Unauthorized and Unidentified Access

Malfunctioned devices- The malfunctioning of the devices had also created scope for security issues in Internet of things application (Aitken et al. 2014). The manufacturers have decreased the quality of the devices for making them cheap, small and available everywhere. It has resulted in raising the failure of the Internet of things devices from the aspect of the traditional endpoints of connectivity IP address, automated server and proxy servers of the routers.

Increase in number of devices- The exponential increase in the use of the internet of things devices have also led to the security issues (Balestrini et al. 2015). The high interconnected nature of the devices has lead to an increase in the number of attacks. The poor security of any one device can affect the resilience and security of the connection on a global scale. According to Smith (2013), Facebook is a single platform that has over a billion users worldwide.

Types of security issues in Internet of things application- The security issues of Internet of things products are a result of data breach at any point of the connection. It has led to risk in exchange of data in between the connected devices. The complex chain of connections in Internet of things has lead to these security issues.

Unauthorized and Unidentified Access- The most challenging issue with the security breach in internet of things is that these devices have become prone to become accessible and exposed (Aitken et al. 2014). The unattended and not operated Internet of things devices are an easy prey for the malicious attack. The hacker can capture the control of the devices by extracting the cryptography secrets of the devices using various techniques like fishing, malwares and viruses. The login details of the user can be compromised due to these accesses.

Unprotected Encryption- Many big companies that provide online transactions use encryption for protecting the personal details and information over their cloud network (Hossain et al. 2015). The small size, incapacity of computation, and low power of the Internet of things devices have added the difficulty to install strong encryption for security measures. The limited processing capacity of the connected device can also lead to the lack of the robust measures of security.

Lack of Patches and Updates- The connected devices of Internet of things require updates and several patches after regular interval (Hossain et al. 2015). The users update their devices for making their device immune from the cyber threats. The risk of the security issues have increased for the lack of the patched version of the applications. The lack of technical expertise and economic incentives are the major causes for the absence of developed updates.

Types of security issues in Internet of things applications

Figure 1: Security flaws of the IoT devices

(Source: Borgohain Kumar and Sanyal 2015)

Analysis of Denial of Service Attack in Internet of things- The most significant attack that Internet of things devices face is Denial of service that stands for denial of service (Zargar et al. 2013). The Internet of things devices must ensure the continuous functioning in order to avoid the potential failure of the operations. The Denial of service is a cyber attack that results in growth of frustrations and dissatisfaction among the users. During this attack the user faces continuous negative response for any access request. The company would eventually undergo revenue loss and poor reaction from their potential market. The Denial of service attack exploits the limitation of the TCP/IP protocols for preventing the users from utilizing the legitimate services of the network resources. The Denial of service attack results in flooding the network for disrupting the services (Zargar et al. 2013). The users can be exempted from using the email services, internet access or web browser. Sometimes, the attack would lead to unnecessary drainage of the resources and it would lead in decreasing the bandwidth limit of the server.

Comparison of Existing methods of Internet of things security issues- The methods that can be used for solving the security issues of Internet of things are preventing the system breaches, supporting the continuous monitoring, and be supple against attacks.

Prevention of System Breaches- Internet of things application must utilize effective security measures for keeping the hackers out of the network. The device needs to be kept at complete secured position from Hackers and breaches.

Support the continuous monitoring- Vulnerabilities are noticed in all the security systems. Even the most secured solutions either hardware or software have slackness in preventing future attacks (Amadeo et al. 2014). Hence, all the preventive measures must be checked and monitored. The security system must be constantly upgraded for getting protection against the newer attacks.

Supple nature of the system- The system should be made in such a way that even in case of severe data breach, the system could withstand the attack. The damage to the system should be minimized and the recovery of the system and information must be supple.

Figure 2: Percentage of use of different security methods for IoT

(Source: Amadeo et al. 2014)

Methods for reducing security issues in Internet of things- Object level of Security- The best practice for security of Internet of things can be achieved by dealing with the physical level of security that is resulted by logical breach of the network component (Gubbi et al. 2013). The security function of the Internet of things would be present within the web service rather than within the object due to the absence of local resources. The objects would focus on the security parameters, message integrity and secure communication. With the development of technology, the level of security would move towards the object and ultimately it would be embedded.

Comparison of Existing methods of Internet of things security issues

Change of priorities of the security- The development of hacking and cyber criminal technologies have led to consequences of security failure in the Internet of things (Gubbi et al. 2013). The Internet of things has become embedded and it has reached to its complex form with graver scenarios of the security problems. The IPv6 protocol would be helpful for attaining limitless IP addresses with security innovations and standardization.

Conclusion

Internet of things takes the advantage of the advancements achieved in electronics, computing power, and network interconnections. The large scale implementations of the advanced technology of Internet of things have resulted in developing a promising transformation in different aspects of the human life. Internet of things has risk factors associated with the activities of interconnection. The various factors for security crisis in Internet of things are Poor Structure of Devices, Malfunctioned devices, and Increase in number of devices has affected the security of the connection on a global scale. The types of security issues in Internet of things application are classified into Unauthorized and Unidentified Access, Unprotected Encryption, and Lack of Patches and Updates. The lack of technical expertise and economic incentives are the major causes for the security issue in application of Internet of things.

References

Aitken, R., Chandra, V., Myers, J., Sandhu, B., Shifren, L. and Yeric, G., 2014, June. Device and technology implications of the Internet of Things. InVLSI Technology (VLSI-Technology): Digest of Technical Papers, 2014 Symposium on (pp. 1-4). IEEE.

Balestrini, M., Diez, T., Marshall, P., Gluhak, A. and Rogers, Y., 2015. IoT community technologies: leaving users to their own devices or orchestration of engagement?. EAI Endorsed Transactions on Internet of Things, 1(1).

Borgohain, T., Kumar, U. and Sanyal, S., 2015. Survey of security and privacy issues of internet of things. arXiv preprint arXiv:1501.02211.

Gubbi, J., Buyya, R., Marusic, S. and Palaniswami, M., 2013. Internet of Things (IoT): A vision, architectural elements, and future directions. Future Generation Computer Systems, 29(7), pp.1645-1660.

Jing, Q., Vasilakos, A.V., Wan, J., Lu, J. and Qiu, D., 2014. Security of the internet of things: Perspectives and challenges. Wireless Networks, 20(8), pp.2481-2501.

Smith, C., 2013. By the numbers: 32 amazing Facebook stats. Digital Marketing Ramblings website. Retrieved August, 4, p.2013.

Tankard, C., 2015. The security issues of the Internet of Things. Computer Fraud & Security, 2015(9), pp.11-14.

Xia, F., Yang, L.T., Wang, L. and Vinel, A., 2012. Internet of things.International Journal of Communication Systems, 25(9), p.1101.

Zargar, S.T., Joshi, J. and Tipper, D., 2013. A survey of defense mechanisms against distributed denial of service (DDoS) flooding attacks.IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 15(4), pp.2046-2069.

Chang, K.D., Chen, J.L., Chen, C.Y. and Chao, H.C., 2012, January. IoT operations management and traffic analysis for Future Internet. InComputing, Communications and Applications Conference (ComComAp), 2012 (pp. 138-142). IEEE.

Khan, R., Khan, S.U., Zaheer, R. and Khan, S., 2012, December. Future internet: the internet of things architecture, possible applications and key challenges. In Frontiers of Information Technology (FIT), 2012 10th International Conference on (pp. 257-260). IEEE.

Amadeo, M., Campolo, C., Iera, A. and Molinaro, A., 2014, June. Named data networking for IoT: an architectural perspective. In Networks and Communications (EuCNC), 2014 European Conference on (pp. 1-5). IEEE.

Hossain, M.M., Fotouhi, M. and Hasan, R., 2015, June. Towards an Analysis of Security Issues, Challenges, and Open Problems in the Internet of Things. In 2015 IEEE World Congress on Services (pp. 21-28). IEEE.