A topic‐centric access control model for the publish/subscribe paradigm

Abstract

Summary The publish/subscribe paradigm provides loosely coupled and scalable communication for the Internet of Things (IoT). In this paradigm, access control is an efficient approach to guaranteeing security. However, existing access control methods are not suitable for the publish/subscribe paradigm in the sensing layer of the IoT due to their coarse‐grained controls and lack of self‐configuration. To address these problems, in this paper, we propose a topic‐centric access control model (TCAC) to realize fine‐grained authorization for the sensing layer of the IoT. First, we use topics, a fundamental concept for the publish/subscribe paradigm, as the basic access control unit to dynamically authorize access according to the attributes of devices, users, and topics. Second, an administration model for TCAC is proposed to manage these attributes and configure access policies to effectively implement user‐driven access controls. Finally, a healthcare case is used to demonstrate the security of the proposed TCAC. The results show that our model is dynamic, fine‐grained, and user driven.