IoT Technology: Definition and Considerations

Discuss about the Security and Privacy Issues in IoT Applications.

The concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) technology is mainly involved with the interconnection of all devices around vicinity. The connection is possible when each of the associated devices is connected to each other. As a result, one link from a device can be used to control other connected devices. The name of this technology was first coined by the community of the RFID. Since then, its growth has been mainly due to the emergence of mobile devices in the world which has led companies to make connected devices. This report includes a discussion of the technology and the relevant applications of this technology. This report also includes relevant discussions of the challenges and problems which help in identifying the gaps associated in the technology concerned. Lastly, the future research regarding this technology has also been discussed in this report.

Internet of Things (IoT) technology is defined by the acquisition of a system which links the physical world attributes and the machine by using wired or wireless technologies. These connections can be local area connections or wide area connections (Wortmann & Flüchter, 2015). There are three different considerations of the IoT technology.

The main aspect of the Internet of Things (IoT) technology is the need to communicate among the devices. The deployment of the Internet of Things (IoT) technology has been involved with the connection among various industrial equipments. The mission of this technology in the modern times is to connect all the necessary devices. It can include gas turbines or even home automations. Moreover, the use of IoT can be emphasized on living organisms as well (Yang, 2014). For example, the measurement of health based standards of livestock can be used for extensive monitoring of their health. This also helps in farming efficiency and thus can be used in various other practices as well. The use of wearable electronic system is the most common example of the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) technology.

The objects connected through a network can be easily communicated and controlled. As a result, the need for human interaction will be reduced significantly. For example, people can access their Smartphone to control the status of their applications in case of home automations. They can also change their level to find the accuracy in control.

Various companies or organizations are involved in the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) technology for cutting down expenses. Moreover, the use of this technology can be emphasized for businesses as real time analytics are collected and not estimates from the data (Osseiran et al., 2017). The Internet of Things (IoT) technology can also help businesses to lower the rate of equipment failures such that it can be used for increasing the profit made by that company or organization.

Applications of IoT Technology

The Internet of Things (IoT) technology is mainly concerned with the connectivity among various devices for achieving automations in technology. For this reason, there are various technologies in place that helps in facilitating connectivity among the associated aspects.

The wireless sensor networks are comprised of independent nodes where the communication occur using limited bandwidth and frequency. The main nodes of a wireless sensor network are sensor, microcontroller, memory device, transceiver and battery (Cui, 2016). However, as the range of communication is not very high, the adoption of multi-hop transmission has been enabled for communication purposes. The information from various devices are collected which are then directed towards the sink for routing towards the base station. The use of multi hops in communications is achieved by undertaking communicative paths with different loads. Lastly, the use of wireless transceivers is used for facilitating transmission of data through various nodes.

The use of RFID tags are mainly in place for the automatic communication among the devices. These are involved with the use of radio frequency waves for transmitting and receiving of information. This reduces the need to maintain line of sight propagation which is an excellent choice for Internet of Things (IoT) technology. They are usually made up of transponders (RFID tags) and the transceivers (RFID reader).

The RFID tags consist of an antenna and memory units which are used to transmit identifier numbers known as the Electronic Product Code (EPC). This tag is the main consideration for identifying them (Da Xu, He & Li, 2014). The RFID tag works in association with the RFID reader which helps in identifying the tags. The RFID reader scans the unique identification number and processes them accordingly.

There are various benefits due to the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. However, there is various privacy and security based problems which mainly arises due to the presence of vulnerabilities in the technology itself. It can be seen that the majority of the attacks due to the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies are comprised of loss of information or loss of services. This is mainly because various devices are interconnected with each other and the information is shared to each of the devices. As a result, the personal information is to be secured by the companies responsible for the development of products (Al-Fuqaha et al., 2015). This will help in securing the privacy of the users which will in turn lead to enhancing the security of the system. Furthermore, the use of IoT devices are adopted through various communications networks. This presents an additional issue in the security and privacy of the system which has to be addressed for securing the network.

Technologies for Facilitating Connectivity Among IoT Devices

Trespassing: If a lock of a system can be affected using malicious codes in the system it can lead to breaking the locks associated. This will not be able to address the security requirements and a result, the valuable resources of users will be lost due to such errors. For this problem, the need to secure the system is a priority which can be done by changing passwords simultaneously and applying other secure authentication mechanisms.

Monitoring or personal information leakage: The main utilization of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies is the monitoring of the surroundings. This is done by the integration of sensors in the devices which monitors the parameters involved in the process (Mukhopadhyay & Suryadevara, 2014). However, if an unethical user can hack into the system, all the monitored information including the aspects belonging to the house can be stolen leading. This is the need for encryption of the parameters which helps in protecting the information even after hacking of the resources.

DoS/DDoS attacks: These types of attacks are extremely harmful as they may damage the system responsible for the process. Hackers may get unethical access to the network and send messages in bulk to hamper the system. These messages are usually comprised of Clear to Send (CTS) of Request to Send (RTS) instructions which are sent in bulk. This leads to the system getting crashed. Moreover, the DoS attacks can also be done by utilizing malicious codes in the system which also leads to the crashing of the architecture (Li, Da Xu & Zhao, 2015). As a result, the resources are drained and problems are evident in the victim’s house. For addressing the requirements, authentication protocol are required to be established for solving this problem.

Falsification technique: Another problem associated with the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies is the falsification techniques. In this case, the attacker can collect the packets in case of a transmission and lead to changes in the routing table. In spite of the fact that an SSL certificate is installed in a network, the attacker can bypass the certification which in turn will lead to breaches in the confidentiality of the system. IT may also lead to misinterpretation of the contents included in a network (Stankovic, 2014). This can also lead to loss of valuable information from the network of the victim mainly due to the fact that all the information is stored in the devices. For addressing the problem associated with this threat, the need for authenticating an SSL connection required. This will require proper authentication mechanisms to be in place for this.

Challenges and Problems Associated with IoT Technology

This section is used for discussing the presence of gaps in the system mainly due to the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies in the market. The various considerations for the identification will be on the aspect of issues that have been identified and the issues that are to be identified.

There are various issues present in the system which have been identified by the companies responsible for the adoption of the technology.

The privacy is the first issue in the context of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. As data is collected by mostly all companies, the need to secure them is also a concern. Many television companies are found to collect data from smart televisions. This is mainly done for recording the viewing habit of their customers such that advertisements can be shown to the relevant customers for better impact (Sicari et al., 2015). The transfer of data is to be secured else it can be hacked by outside sources. In this case, the data that is collected are sent in an encrypted form which helps in reducing the chances of data loss.

The security of the system is the next issue that companies or organizations are considering for improving. This will reduce the presence of any problems associated which in turn will help in maximizing the sales made by that company or organization. This is mainly done by adopting monitoring and authentication based protocol for securing the system (Want, Schilit & Jenson, 2015). The next is the application security which is concerned with the adoption of security on the applications that are to be connected with the system. These applications are made to address the security needs by encrypting the packets that are transmitted. The last aspect is the network security which is responsible for securing the network of the system.

The lack of standards is the third issue in the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. Due to this, there are various standards that have been enforced for regulating the technological aspects of IoT. This is mainly adopted for getting an idea about the permitted devices and the non-permitted devices that are in place in the network. This will also help the companies to accept a standard for their system which will help in manufacturing the devices in accordance to the requirements.

Attacks on the network are the most important issue faced by the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. These include man in the middle attacks, eavesdropping, imitation and routing diversions. In case of the man in the middle attacks and eavesdropping, an attacker can check the network for incoming packet transmissions and alter them accordingly. This will lead to changes in the normal functioning of the devices (Rifkin, 2014). In a similar manner, imitation is adopted in case of spoofing techniques where an attacker clones the device which facilitates connection. This is done mainly for the theft of information. These attacks are solved by the adoption of various techniques which includes encryptions standards and authentication. This help in protecting the confidentiality of the system by addressing the need for security in the systems.

Addressing the Challenges and Problems

There are various issues that are still considered but have not been referenced. The first is the application specific data minimization requirements and the privacy protection policies which have to be addressed in the application layer of the IoT technologies. The next is the need to secure the service support by adopting data storage by cryptography (Jin et al., 2014). In addition, the need for data protection and management of data is another requirement which must be addressed by the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. Lastly, cloud interactions in the network layer and the security in communications are other aspects which have not been addressed in the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies.

The next requirement for the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies is to consider the cost of the systems. As the smart devices are made up of various components like sensors and trackers, the expense of the installation is very high. As a result, the need to consider the reduction in the cost is a necessity which will help in widespread adoption of the technologies.

The third consideration is in the level of energy usage. Due to the fact that the smart devices need to stay connected for operations, they draw a large amount of electricity for this reason. It is thus required for the companies to develop additional technologies that will consume less amount of energy for operations.

Lastly, the data management is another technology that has to be addressed for any IoT devices. This must be done in such a way so as to protect the information associated to the customers. The volume of the data that is generated and the critical requirements for it has to be addressed for this reason.

Thus, it can be noted from the issues in the Internet of Things (IoT) technology that the companies associated with the development of the technologies, need to address the requirements of the issues so that it can be mitigated. The mitigation can be done by applying further security and privacy based protocols on the issues like encryption and authentication protocols which can help in solving the types of attacks listed above.

There are various research areas which can utilize the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. These are made by adopting the security needs of the recent needs. The first future application is the IOsL (Internet of smart living). This is involved in the remote operation of the devices in the vicinity of the system (Perera et al., 2014). This is done by connecting the outer devices to the system network mainly by implementing the need for authentication protocols for security needs.

Lack of Standards in IoT Technology

The next future technological adoption is the IOsC (Internet of smart cities). This is basically involved in the monitoring for the structural conditions of the buildings in the city. This is also associated with the safety and the transportation aspects of the cities. This is done by adopting the encrypting need for securing the data.

Conclusion

Thus, it can be concluded from the discussions made in this report that the need for addressing the security of the system is required in case of the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. This will help in widespread adoption of the technology in the market which will help in increasing the revenues made by the companies responsible for the development of smart devices. This report has included a discussion of the technology and it’s relevant to the other technologies in place. This report has also listed the challenges in place from the adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. Lastly, the future technologies in place which have addressed the need the security has also been listed in this report.

References

Al-Fuqaha, A., Guizani, M., Mohammadi, M., Aledhari, M., & Ayyash, M. (2015). Internet of things: A survey on enabling technologies, protocols, and applications. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 17(4), 2347-2376.

Botta, A., De Donato, W., Persico, V., & Pescapé, A. (2016). Integration of cloud computing and internet of things: a survey. Future Generation Computer Systems, 56, 684-700.

Cui, X. (2016). The internet of things. In Ethical Ripples of Creativity and Innovation (pp. 61-68). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Da Xu, L., He, W., & Li, S. (2014). Internet of things in industries: A survey. IEEE Transactions on industrial informatics, 10(4), 2233-2243.

Jin, J., Gubbi, J., Marusic, S., & Palaniswami, M. (2014). An information framework for creating a smart city through internet of things. IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 1(2), 112-121.

Kalita, A. (2017). Internet of Things.

Lee, I., & Lee, K. (2015). The Internet of Things (IoT): Applications, investments, and challenges for enterprises. Business Horizons, 58(4), 431-440.

Li, S., Da Xu, L., & Zhao, S. (2015). The internet of things: a survey. Information Systems Frontiers, 17(2), 243-259.

Mukhopadhyay, S. C., & Suryadevara, N. K. (2014). Internet of things: Challenges and opportunities. In Internet of Things (pp. 1-17). Springer, Cham.

Osseiran, A., Elloumi, O., Song, J., & Monserrat, J. F. (2017). Internet of Things. IEEE Communications Standards Magazine, 1(2), 84-84.

Perera, C., Zaslavsky, A., Christen, P., & Georgakopoulos, D. (2014). Context aware computing for the internet of things: A survey. IEEE communications surveys & tutorials, 16(1), 414-454.

Perera, C., Zaslavsky, A., Christen, P., & Georgakopoulos, D. (2014). Sensing as a service model for smart cities supported by internet of things. Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies, 25(1), 81-93.

Rifkin, J. (2014). The zero marginal cost society: The internet of things, the collaborative commons, and the eclipse of capitalism. St. Martin’s Press.

Sicari, S., Rizzardi, A., Grieco, L. A., & Coen-Porisini, A. (2015). Security, privacy and trust in Internet of Things: The road ahead. Computer networks, 76, 146-164.

Stankovic, J. A. (2014). Research directions for the internet of things. IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 1(1), 3-9.

Want, R., Schilit, B. N., & Jenson, S. (2015). Enabling the internet of things. Computer, 48(1), 28-35.

Whitmore, A., Agarwal, A., & Da Xu, L. (2015). The Internet of Things—A survey of topics and trends. Information Systems Frontiers, 17(2), 261-274.

Wortmann, F., & Flüchter, K. (2015). Internet of things. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 57(3), 221-224.

Yang, S. H. (2014). Internet of things. In Wireless Sensor Networks (pp. 247-261). Springer, London.

Zanella, A., Bui, N., Castellani, A., Vangelista, L., & Zorzi, M. (2014). Internet of things for smart cities. IEEE Internet of Things journal, 1(1), 22-32.