Architectural Layers of Internet of Things: Analysis of Security Threats and Their Countermeasures

Abstract

A pervasive network architecture that interconnect heterogeneous objects, devices, technologies and services called Internet of Things has prompted a drastic change in demand of smart devices which in turn has increased the rate of data exchange. These smart devices are built with numerous sensors which collect information from other interacting devices, process it and send it to remote locations for storage or further processing. Although this mechanism of data processing and sharing has contributed immensely to the information world, it has recently posed high security risk on privacy and data confidentiality. This paper therefore analyses different security threats to data at different architectural layers of Internet of Things, possible countermeasures and other in-depth security measures for Internet of Things. The paper identifies device authentication on IoT network to be of paramount importance in securing IoT systems. This paper also suggests some essential technologies of security such as encryption for securing IoT devices and the data shared over IoT network.