Reference Architectures of Iot
Reference Architectures of Iot
Reference Architectures of Iot
Lecture 1
In the IoT domain, anyone can propose an own architecture and an own commu-
nication protocol, due to a wide variety of requirements to which each architecture
should be compliant.
A common reference model for the IoT domain and the identification of reference
architectures can help to a faster, more focused development and an exponential
increase of IoT-related solutions.
The European Lighthouse Integrated Project has addressed for three years the
Internet-of-Things Architecture (IoT-A) and created an architectural reference model
together with the definition of an initial set of key building blocks. It wants to pro-
mote a common ground between architectures so that they can interoperate even a
more levels. IoT-A has achieved that thanks to two steps:
IoT-A ARM
• The IoT Reference Model, which provides the highest abstraction level
for the definition of the IoT-A Architectural Reference Model. It promotes
a common understanding of the IoT domain. It includes the description of
domain, communication and information model;
• The IoT Reference Architecture, which is the reference for building com-
pliant IoT architectures. It provides views and perspectives on different archi-
tectural aspects that are of concern to stakeholders of the IoT.
Cognitive Aid
view can help people new to the field to ?find their way? and to understand
the special features and intricacies of IoT.
• Thirdly, the IoT ARM can assist IoT project leaders in planning the work at
hand and the teams needed.
• Fourthly, the IoT ARM helps to identify independent building blocks for IoT
systems. This constitutes very valuable information when dealing with ques-
tions such as system modularity, processor architectures, third-vendor options,
re-use of components already developed, etc.
Establishing the common ground for the IoT encompasses defining IoT entities and
describing their basic interactions and relationships with each other. The IoT ARM
provides exactly such a common ground for the IoT field.
Generating Architectures
One of the main benefits is the use of the IoT ARM for generating compliant archi-
tectures for specific systems. This is done by providing best practices and guidance
for translating the IoT ARM into concrete architectures. The benefit of this type of
generation scheme for IoT architectures is not only a certain degree of automation
in this process, and thus lower R&D efforts, but also that the decisions made follow
a clear, documented pattern.
the IoT ARM defines a set of tactics and design choices for meeting qualitative
system requirements. All of these facts can be used to predict whether two derived
architectures will differ and where they will do so. The IoT ARM can also be
used for reverse mapping. System architectures can be cast in the “IoT ARM?
language and the resulting “translation? of the system architectures is then stripped
of incompatible language and system partitions and mappings. The differences that
remain are then true differences in architecture.
Achieving Interoperability
By comparing the design choices made when deriving two architectures, one can
readily identify where in the architecture measures are necessary to achieve inter-
operability. Interoperability may be achieved a posteriori by integrating one IoT
system as subsystem in another system, or by building a bridge through which key
functionalities of the respective other IoT system can be used.
the IoT ARM can be used to devise system roadmaps that lead to minimum changes
between two product generations while still guaranteeing a noticeable enhancement
in system capability and features. This approach also helps the designer to formu-
late clear and standardised, requirements-based rationales for the system roadmap
chosen and the product life cycles that result from the system roadmap.
Benchmarking
While the reference model prescribed the language to be used in the systems/architectures
to be assessed, the reference architecture stated the minimum (functional) require-
ments for the systems/ architectures. By standardising the description and also
the ordering and delineation of system components and aspects, this approach also
provided the benchmarking process with a high level of transparency and inherent
comparability
Lecture 2
• When these common language references are established, the domain model
adds descriptions about the relationship between the concepts. These concepts
and relationships serve the basis for the development of an information model
because a working system needs to capture and process information about its
main entities and their interactions.
• A working system that captures and operates on the domain and information
model contains concepts and entities of its own, and these need to be described
in a separate model, the functional model.
Apart from the reference model, the other main component of an ARM is the
Reference Architecture. A System Architecture is a communication tool for different
stakeholders of the system.
itor and interact with the physical world for the case of an IoT Reference
Architecture.
• A concrete architecture can be further elaborated and mapped into real world
components by designing, building, engineering, and testing the different com-
ponents of the actual system.
• The whole process is iterative, which means that the actual deployed sys-
tem in the field provides invaluable feedback with respect to the design and
engineering choices, current constraints of the system, and potential future
opportunities that are fed back to the concrete architectures. The general
essentials out of multiple concrete architectures can then be aggregated, and
contribute to the evolution of the Reference Architecture.
A domain model defines the main concepts of a specific area of interest, in this case
the IoT. These concepts are expected to remain unchanged over the course of time,
even if the details of an ARM may undergo continuous transformation or evolution
over time. The domain model captures the basic attributes of the main concepts
and the relationship between these concepts. A domain model also serves as a tool
for human communication between people working in the domain in question and
between people who work across different domains.
The main concepts of ARM domain model are:
• User and Physical Entity: As interaction with the physical world is the key
for the IoT. The first most fundamental interaction is between a human or an
application with the physical world object or place. The physical interaction
is the result of the intention of the human to achieve a certain goal (e.g. park
the car).A Physical Entity, as the model shows, can potentially contain other
• Physical Artifact:In order to monitor and interact with the Physical Entities
through their corresponding virtual entities, the Physical Entities or their sur-
rounding environment needs to be instrumented with certain kinds of Devices,
or certain Devices need to be embedded/attached to the environment. The
Devices are physical artifacts with which the physical and virtual worlds in-
teract. For the IoT Domain Model, three kinds of Device types are the most
important - Sensors, actuators and Tags.
• Services are therefore digital artifacts with which Users interact with Physical
Entities through the Virtual Entities. Therefore, the Virtual Entities that
are associated with Physical Entities instrumented with Devices that expose
Resources are also associated with the corresponding resource Services. These
associations are important to be maintained for lookup or discovery by the
interested Users.
• IoT Services can be classified into three main classes according to their level of
abstraction: (i)Resource-Level Services (ii) Virtual Entity-Level Services (iii)
Integrated Services .
Information Model
• These properties/attributes can be static or dynamic and enter into the system
in various forms, e.g. by manual data entry or reading a sensor attached to
the Virtual Entity. Virtual Entity attributes can also be digital synchronized
copies of the state of an actuator.
• In the presentation of the high-level IoT information model, we omit the at-
tributes that are not updated by an IoT Device (sensor, tag) or the attributes
that do not affect any IoT Device (actuator, tag), with the exception of essen-
tial attributes such as names and identifiers
Functional model
• Device functional group: The Device FG contains all the possible functionality
hosted by the physical Devices that are used for instrumenting the Physical
Entities.
• IoT Service functional group: The IoT Service FG corresponds mainly to the
Service class from the IoT Domain Model, and contains single IoT Services
exposed by Resources hosted on Devices or in the Network (e.g. processing or
storage Resources).
• IoT Service Organization functional group The purpose of the IoT Service
Organization FG is to host all functional components that support the com-
position and orchestration of IoT and Virtual Entity services.
Communication Model
The communication model for an IoT Reference Model consists of the identification
of the endpoints of interactions, traffic patterns (e.g. unicast vs. multicast), and
general properties of the underlying technologies used for enabling such interactions.
The fact that Human Users are part of the system that could potentially harm
humans if malfunctioning, or expose private information, motivates the Safety and
Privacy needs for the IoT Reference Model and Architecture.
• Safety: The IoT Reference Model can only provide IoT-related guidelines for
ensuring a safe system to the extent possible and controllable by a system
designer. A system designer of such critical systems typically follows an iter-
ative process with two steps: (a) identification of hazards followed by, (b) the
mitigation plan.
• Security The Security Model for IoT consists of communication security that
focuses mostly on the confidentiality and integrity protection of interacting
entities and functional components such as Identity Management, Authenti-
cation, Authorization, and Trust & Reputation.
• Functional View: Description of what the system does, and its main func-
tions.
• Information View: Description of the data and information that the system
handles.
Functional View
It consists of the Functional Groups (FGs) presented earlier in the IoT Functional
Model, each of which includes a set of Functional Components (FCs).
Information View
The information view consists of (a) the description of the information handled in
the IoT System, and (b) the way this information is handled in the system;
The pieces of information handled by an IoT system complying to an ARM such
as the IoT-A are the following:
• Resource Descriptions, which contain the type of resource (e.g. sensor), iden-
tity, associated Services, and Devices. Device Descriptions such as device
capabilities (e.g. sensors, radios)
• IoT Business Process Model, which describes the steps of a business process
Lecture 3
IoTWF Architecture
In 2014 the IoTWF architectural committee (led by Cisco, IBM, Rockwell Automa-
tion, and others) published a seven-layer IoT architectural reference model. While
various IoT reference models exist, the one put forth by the IoT World Forum offers
a clean, simplified perspective on IoT and includes edge computing, data storage,
and access. It provides a succinct way of visualizing IoT from a technical perspec-
tive. Each of the seven layers is broken down into specific functions, and security
encompasses the entire model.
As shown in figure the IoT Reference Model defines a set of levels with control
flowing from the center (this could be either a cloud service or a dedicated data
center), to the edge, which includes sensors, devices, machines, and other types of
intelligent end nodes. In general, data travels up the stack, originating from the
edge, and goes northbound to the center. Using this reference model, we are able
to achieve the following:
• Identify different technologies at each layer and how they relate to one another
• Define a tiered security model that is enforced at the transition points between
levels
The first layer of the IoT Reference Model is the physical devices and controllers
layer. This layer is home to the “things? in the Internet of Things, including the
various endpoint devices and sensors that send and receive information. The size
of these “things? can range from almost microscopic sensors to giant machines in
a factory. Their primary function is generating data and being capable of being
queried and/or controlled over a network.
In the second layer of the IoT Reference Model, the focus is on connectivity. The
most important function of this IoT layer is the reliable and timely transmission of
data. More specifically, this includes transmissions between Layer 1 devices and the
network and between the network and information processing that occurs at Layer
3 (the edge computing layer).
As you may notice, the connectivity layer encompasses all networking elements
of IoT and doesn?t really distinguish between the last-mile network (the network
between the sensor/endpoint and the IoT gateway, discussed later in this chapter),
gateway, and backhaul networks.
Edge computing is the role of Layer 3. Edge computing is often referred to as the
“fog? layer and is discussed in the section “Fog Computing,? later in this chapter.
At this layer, the emphasis is on data reduction and converting network data flows
into information that is ready for storage and processing by higher layers. One of
the basic principles of this reference model is that information processing is initiated
as early and as close to the edge of the network as possible. Figure highlights the
functions handled by Layer 3 of the IoT Reference Model.
Edge computing is the role of Layer 3. Edge computing is often referred to as the
“fog? layer and is discussed in the section “Fog Computing,? later in this chapter.
At this layer, the emphasis is on data reduction and converting network data flows
into information that is ready for storage and processing by higher layers. One of
the basic principles of this reference model is that information processing is initiated
as early and as close to the edge of the network as possible. Figure highlights the
functions handled by Layer 3 of the IoT Reference Model.
Another important function that occurs at Layer 3 is the evaluation of data to
see if it can be filtered or aggregated before being sent to a higher layer. This also
allows for data to be reformatted or decoded, making additional processing by other
systems easier. Thus, a critical function is assessing the data to see if predefined
thresholds are crossed and any action or alerts need to be sent.
The upper layers deal with handling and processing the IoT data generated by the
bottom layer. For the sake of completeness, Layers 4?7 of the IoT Reference Model
are summarized
The IT and OT organizations need to work together for overall data management.
Lecture 4
REST Architectures
One promising approach that is being brought to the IoT is the idea that it should be
built in a similar way to the Internet. There are several reasons to use a web-based
approach in the IoT. The web has been around for decades and lots of experience
has been gained. Since its public release in 1991, the World Wide Web has dramat-
ically evolved and has become an infrastructure upon which to store documents,
resources, and to build distributed applications. The most important aspects of the
introduction of the web were the referencing of resources through uniform resource
identifiers (URIs) and the introduction of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
as the application-layer protocol for hypermedia systems. Along with these two ma-
jor pillars, other essential standards and technologies have been developed, such as
the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) for web documents, web browsers, and
web servers. As the web became more and more popular, browsers integrated dy-
namic behavior through Javascript and Cascading Stylesheets (CSS). After all these
years, HTTP is by far the most common application-layer protocol and software
libraries implementing web protocols are available (web servers, HTTP clients and
so on) for any programming language. Ways of building web applications are widely
known and used: adopting similar approaches for the IoT could therefore take advan-
tage of the expertise of existing developers. Moreover, the web has proved to scale
extremely well: this is extremely important for the IoT, where billions of connected
devices are expected to operate. The IoT can greatly benefit from all the experience
gained in the development of the web and thus the use of a similar architecture
would seem to be a wise design choice.
The web was born to be an easy to use, distributed, and loosely coupled (see below)
system for sharing documents. The architecture of the web is simple enough to
make it easy to build applications and manage content. The web is based on a
small set of principles, yet it has proved to scale and evolve wonderfully. Thanks to
these principles, the web has evolved to become a platform for building distributed
systems using HTTP. REpresentational State Transfer (REST) is the architectural
style behind the web. Defined in 2000 in Roy Fielding?s PhD thesis [29], REST
defines a set of rules and principles that all the elements of the architecture must
conform to in order to build web applications that scale well, in terms of:
Loose coupling means that the endpoints should contain as little information about
each other as needed to work. All necessary missing information should be collected
while interacting. The client must know very few things a-priori. The server will
drive the client and pass in the information required to progress and to perform the
intended operations. The more a client knows about the server, the more closely it
depends on the server implementation. This is a weakness for an application because
any change on the server must be matched by a change in the client, which would
otherwise just break. In a highly dynamic, evolving, and gigantic environment such
as the IoT, design principles that lead to create robust applications must be adopted.
Resource-oriented Architectures
REST is based on the concept of a resource. A resource can be defined as any rele-
vant entity in an application?s domain that is exposed on the network. A webpage,
a video, and an order on an e-commerce website can all be considered web resources.
A resource is anything with which a user interacts while progressing toward some
goal. Anything can be mapped as a resource, as long as it is meaningful for the
application. Resources are characterized by some data, such as the title of the page
or the items in an order.
An alternative to a resource-oriented architecture (ROA) is a service-oriented
architecture (SOA). SOAs have been around for many years and have become a
reference for many legacy businessoriented systems. A SOA refers to an architecture
where two endpoints communicate through a pre-defined set of messaging contracts.
A client starts interacting with a server by retrieving the list of available services and
how these can be mapped to HTTP messages, in a Web Service Definition Language
(WSDL) document. In essence, the WSDL maps a message to a method call on the
server. Remote method calls are contained in a SOAP (an XML specification)
included in the body of messages. The presence of a WSDL document is needed
to add semantics to messages. However, this is a weakness: if a server changes its
services, a client needs to get access to the new WSDL or its functionalities are
Lecture 5
• clients (or user agents, such as browsers), which are the application interface
and initiate the interactions
Intermediaries act as clients and servers at the same time. Forward proxies (known
to clients) are ?exit points? for a request. Reverse proxies appear as origin servers
to a client, but actually relay requests.
A REST architecture is characterized by uniform interfaces: all connectors within
the system must conform to this interface?s constraints. Collectively, REST defines
the following principles:
• identification of resources
• self-descriptive messages
Representation of Resources
Resource Identifierstitle
• a uniform resource name (URN) specifies the name of a resource (e.g., urn:ietf:rfc:2616);
• a uniform resource locator (URL) specifies how to locate the resource, (e.g.,
http://example.com/books/123)
All URIs take the following form: scheme:scheme-specificpart. The scheme part
defines how the rest of the URI is to be
interpreted ? it typically serves as an indication of the communication protocol
that should be used to target the resource. For instance, URNs use the urn scheme,
while web resources use the http scheme. URLs include all the information needed
to successfully address the resource.
The optional [username:password] part specifies credentials to use
for authenticated access to the resource. The host and optional port include
networking information needed to reach to the resource. The host can be be ei-
ther an IP address or a fully qualified domain name, which must be resolved using
the DNS system. The path provides information to locate the resource inside the
host. The query contains matching information to filter out the result. Finally, the
fragment can be used to identify a specific portion of the resource. URIs should be
opaque and not expose any specific notion of the format used to represent the tar-
geted resource. For example, http://example.com/people/123 is a good URI, while
http://example.com/people/123.xml and http://example.com/people/123.json are
not.
Statelessness
and introduce new functionality (states and links in the FSM), the client would be
unaffected by these changes and could continue to operate.
In summary, RESTful applications progress according to the following steps:
3. The representation contains links that define the possible transitions to the
next states of the FSM.
4. The client selects a link to follow and issues the next request; that
Lecture 6
The supporting backend logic of many IoT solutions are custom designed with a
particular solution in mind. However due to version upgrades and addition of new
vendor products, the backend logic has to cater to a multi vendor or multi version
deployment of IoT devices. This can be achieved using an API translator. The API
translation component can effectively expose a consistent set of APIs and message
formats in one direction while using adapter sub-components to manage interop-
erability between heterogeneous devices.This component thus has to be reachable
from the field area devices and must therefore necessarily expose a public IP. By
bombarding this component with bogus requests, it could be possible to induce the
backend system into dedicated precious bandwidth towards executing bogus work-
loads, thus resulting in a service outage leading to DOS attacks. Spoofing is possible
in this heterogeneous environment where a malicious node might impersonate an-
other node possibly a router to route data through itself and get unauthorized access
to sensor data.In many IoT applications the protocol suits verify the field devices.
Due to lack of mutual authentication, the schemes are susceptible against MITM
Connectivity
IoT applications typically require two forms of connectivity, and either of these have
their own set of challenges. The first form is at a physical level, where the sender
and receiver need to communicate using the same PHY and MAC. Unfortunately
peripheral IOT devices tend to communicate over low power radio standards like
Bluetooth, ZigBee, Z-Wave, NFC etc The information from these peripheral devices
have to be bridged to an IP network over traditional Ethernet networks.The bridging
devices act as proxies for the peripheral devices which may be a cause for MITM.
The second form of connectivity is in terms of service connectivity. Even if
packets from a physical device can reach the backend, it needs to be appropriately
registered so that the backend can deliver these messages to the appropriate ser-
vices. Any kind of changes to the availability of the services has to be notified
to the respective devices. Otherwise devices will unknowingly flood requests to an
unavailable server leading to DOS attacks.
As the mobility of devices in the field area increases, there could be frequent disrup-
tion in the physical connectivity between the devices with their local bridges. To
mitigate rogue devices from latching on to unauthorized services, peripheral devices
that move to a new location have to maintain service continuity through secure
handoff mechanisms. On the other hand, if the service continuity is disrupted, ow-
ing to the unavailability of the bridging infrastructure or other reasons, the isolated
nodes must be extensively re-verified before the resumption of services. In most
IoT applications it is sufficient to verify just the field devices, but in a few sensi-
tive situations it might require two way verification of the backend system as well.
An adversary node might inject some malicious data in a roaming network before
moving back to the home network and hide itself in the roaming network to pro-
mote repudiation attacks. Further a cloned node may illegally want to exploit the
mobility to co-exist in another network
Field deployments of IoT applications tend to grow either horizontally or ver-
Field devices in IoT applications prefer to use low power radios for the last mile
connectivity. As per current practices, coordinator nodes allocate local addresses to
peer devices and these addresses do not follow a common standard. Moreover the ad-
dressing scheme of a field network remains hidden behind the FAN gateway/bridge,
and makes it difficult to isolate a rogue node. For example, if a rogue node launches
an attack to disable the intermediate bridge, it would be difficult to identify the
erring node. Since the node becomes untraceable, at a later point of time it might
deny for sending a message and thus lead to repudiation attacks. Further the node
can attempt to access unauthorised privileges remaining screened from the outside
network. Even it might take the advantage of not being traceable from the outside
network and spoof within its network to other nodes claiming itself to be a genuine
bridge of the network. To address this problem, low power radios must support a
common addressing scheme like 6LoWPAN that would enable each node to obtain
a unique IPv6 address. For further security, there should be a global repository
where device-IP mappings can be queried for authenticity by interested services or
certificate providers.
Spatio-temporal services
Any event in the IoT world can be characterized by the amplitude of a spatio-
temporal impulse. Therefore it is necessary that the nodes in an IoT deployment are
reasonably time synchronized and that they are able to tag any data with a spatial
geolocation. To achieve this end, these devices could leverage location services like
GPS or Cell Tower Triangulation or WiFi triangulation. But due to this feature,
the user location data should not be revealed to unauthorised users as this might
lead to privacy issues. Also to ensure the time drifts within the FAN cannot be
exploited for replay attacks, the APIs exposed by the backend system should ideally
be idempotent. Additionally the backend system must take into account the variance
in the location data that is available from the end nodes. Otherwise it results in an
inaccuracy of fault reporting leading to incorrect decisions.
Resource constraints
A vast majority of peripheral IoT devices are resource constrained. The constraints
could be in terms of available computational resources, onboard memory(RAM and
ROM), network bandwidth, energy availability, etc. As these nodes are open in the
environment and easily accessible physically, they can be cloned and tampered. Also
as these nodes have very little computation and storage capabilities, they preferably
upload the data into the cloud for huge computations and storage. For this reason
the user data privacy issues also creep in. So strong cryptographic encryption and
integrity mechanisms need to be applied.
Data Interchange
Each of the different devices in an IoT application can potentially have a differ-
ent data packing mechanism because of specific optimizations on their hardware
In an IoT application it is expected that a large number of end devices are going
to be deployed in the field. Therefore it is imperative that IoT devices can function
autonomously and that they can discover the necessary services that they need to
consume. Therefore the coordinators in an IoT deployment must implement resource
and service directories that can be queried on a public interface. The mechanisms
like , two way authentication of the coordinators must be done to ensure that a
rogue coordinator does not implement fake services and subsequently redirect traffic
through itself and may lead to spoofing. Also due to this discovery mechanism,
unnecessary requests to pretend to discover a resource causes DOS like attacks. As
the IoT architecture is hugely distributed, the user data becomes distributed in the
clouds. So without proper security measures it may lead to information leakage
and user privacy issues. Accounting information inconsistencies may also arise here
unless correct measures have been taken
Lecture 7
As the IoT nodes are very easily accessible in the open environment, they have the
possibility to be tampered or cloned. To prevent this, tamper resistant hardware
should be provided for these nodes. Even if a node is tampered or compromised,
there should be enough resiliency so that other nodes remain unaffected. Upon
detection of a node being tampered, future communications with the node might be
blocked to prevent further information loss. In the extreme case, the node may be
needed to flush all data remotely so that the critical data are by no means accessed
by illegal malicious nodes. Cloning of nodes can be prevented by allowing no access
to its memory or crypto information from external sources.
Before any node communicates with a server, it should properly authenticate itself
using certificates as well as the destination node to prevent open access to node
data. Also justified authorization and access control rules are to be implemented on
these nodes to limit them from super user access. At the end, detailed accounting
information of the transaction should be logged. This way it will prevent to get
exploited from spoofing, repudiation and privilege elevation attacks.
Data while being transmitted over the network should be made secure by using
the light-weight crypto algorithms tailored for these resource constrained networks.
Symmetric key encryptions are faster but PKI infrastructure though being slow
allows dynamic key generation and distribution. For integrity checks and to prevent
against MITM attacks light-weight hashes and integrity check codes may be used.
Since the nodes have very less memory they can?t store huge amounts of data or
are capable of doing huge computations and thus off-load them to powerful cloud
servers. Stored data should be properly signed and encrypted so that they are
genuine data and not readable by an anonymous entity.
Proxy security
The proxies become a major target because data are transformed from one form to
another. This bridging infrastructure is thus expected to provide decent transport
level security by implementing something like a secure DTLS over 6LoWPAN on
their FAN side and TLS on their ethernet side. Secure interfaces and mechanisms
of secure transit are required. Application level security can be built in addition
to the transport layer security, depending on the capability of the hardware. Also
cookie or nonce based mechanisms should be implemented to guard them against
improper resource
allocations and DOS attacks. Highly trust based systems are to work in these
middle nodes and proxies.
The data while leaving a constrained network and being routed to the web from the
router needs to be secure. Data in transit in the network backbone should also be
prevented from malicious activities. Corresponding encryption and integrity checks
need to be implemented to guard against eaves dropping and data distortion attacks.
Intrusion detection systems are essential to detect when a network has been adversely
attacked and compromised by an attacker. Menwhile, corresponding prevention
and rollback algorithms should be implemented to prevent the overall network from
further damage. Also the affected nodes should be isolated and investigated for the
security breach.
Higher layer protocols like (D)TLS, IpSec, etc. provide E2E security. But low
powered devices latching with the gateway might run on 6LoWPAN and they in
their network might need to adapt 802.15.4 link layer security. So the protocol
stack should be flexible and accustomed with multiple security solutions while still
maintaining the normal security requirements.
In addition to the above attack prevention scenarios, few common security mea-
sures are to be adapted to resist against the generous attacks. To avoid DOS at-
tacks stateless protocols would be a suitable alternative. The loss due to spoofing
can be limited by reducing the trust relationships, deep packet inspection and use
anti-spoofing techniques.Parties involved n MITM attacks should be guarded by
using certificate authentications wherever possible and message integrity checks us-
ing MAC and MIC should be used. Software securities like firewall, IDS, context
aware security measures and deep packet inspection techniques should be applied.
Anti-virus and antispamwares need to be deployed. Also application based web
security protocols are valuable. Possible modifications are to be applied on the
existing protocols to suite them in LLNs and also non-ip based systems. Encryp-
tion, authentication, integrity, anti-replay, non-repudiation which stands as the basic
mechanisms for security needs to be applied correspondingly but in a light-weight
fashion to protect against the attacks.
Lecture 8
Standardization
Diversities in technologies and standards are identified as one of the major challenges
in the development of IoT applications . Standardization of IoT architecture and
communication technologies is considered as a backbone for the IoT development
in the future. These facts imply that open standards are one of the key factors for
the successful deployment of IoT. This type of standards is an important facilitator
for innovation because of their availability to the public. They are being developed,
approved, and maintained by a collaborative consensus-based decision-making
Architecture
IoT systems should be framed within open IoT architecture and set of standards to
enable integration of various technologies and to support full interoperability. IoT
architecture needs to provide interoperability and to support full mobility to ensure
service continuity (without interruption). Accordingly, one of the main challenges
for IoT systems is to use an open, integrated and standardized architecture with
separated application logic
and hardware infrastructure. The corresponding architectures need to support
heterogeneous nature of things, networks, data and applications to support full
interoperability. Key design requirements for IoT architecture are scalability, inter-
operability, openness, and modularity in a heterogeneous environment. IoT archi-
tecture should enable multi-systems integration, cross-domain interactions, simple
and scalable management functionalities, data analytics and user-friendly applica-
tions as well as the possibility to include the intelligence and automation across the
IoT system. It may be treated as a system or paradigm which may consist physical
objects (e.g. sensors, actuators), virtual objects (e.g. fog/cloud
services, communication layers and protocols) or a hybrid of these two perspec-
tives. According to this perspective, IoT architecture can be classified into four
groups: general/system-level, hardware/network, software and process.
General architecture considers a conceptual model to meet IoT requirements.
There are numerous proposed IoT reference models
but still, there is no general architecture which provides full interoperability. The
existing approaches and efforts to solve this issue
are based on layered frameworks and architecture. Hardware/Network architec-
tures have to enable interoperability among various networks and communication
technologies to provide full connectivity between IoT objects. IoT devices can be
grouped into two groups based on TCP/IP protocol suite support. In order to solve
this heterogeneity related issue, there have been proposed several approaches such
as APIs, gateway solutions,
SDN-based solutions, NFV (Network Functions Virtualization), CCN (Content-
Centric Networking), etc. Also, there are some other proposals such as a wearable
IoT architecture with the ability to offer traceability of streamed data from source
and the devices engaged with [188]. Other challenges are related to various technolo-
gies deployed in different networks including communication interfaces and access
controls. All these issues must be considered in hardware and network architectures.
Software architectures should provide a common set of services to enable pro-
cessing (aggregation, computation, etc.) large
amounts of data for service composition. IoT software architecture and frame-
work need to be used to overcome the complexity of
systems and to provide an environment for IoT services composition. IoT soft-
Other Challanges
Privacy was named by the originator of ubicomp, Mark Weiser, the late chief scientist
at Xerox Parc as a key issue (Weiser, 1991). Machina Research, in association with
Latitude, Council and Info.nl - a trio of web 2.0 consultancy companies ? recently
ran
an web survey, polling views on the future internet of things. One of the questions
was
related to concerns that people may have about living in a future connected
environment. Privacy was mentioned by a clear majority as a key challenge. Privacy
Enhancing
Technologies (PET) is a partial solution. The Privacy Coach, produced by a
small
Dutch consortium of RFID experts, is an application running on a mobile phone
that
supports customers in making privacy decisions when confronted with RFID tags
(Broeninjk and others, 2011). It functions as a mediator between customer
privacy preferences (Fischer-Hübner, 2011) and corporate privacy policies, trying to
find a match
between the two, and informing the user of the outcome. Gérald Santucci (head
of unit
Knowledge Sharing), key IOT architect at the European Commission explains:
”in the
future, the right to privacy, whatever we do to implement it with technology
and/or
regulations (“right to be forgotten”, “right to oblivion”, “right to silent chips”,
etc.), will
become a subset of ethics. The future is (largely) about ethics-by-design?