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Pervasive IoT applications enable us to perceive, analyze, control, and optimize the traditional physical systems. Recently, security breaches in many IoT applications have indicated that IoT applications may put the physical systems at risk. Severe resource constraints and insufficient security design are two major causes of many security problems in IoT applications. As an extension of the cloud, the emerging edge computing with rich resources provides us a new venue to design and deploy novel security solutions for IoT applications. Although there are some research efforts in this area, edge-based security designs for IoT applications are still in its infancy. This paper aims to present a comprehensive survey of existing IoT security solutions at the edge layer as well as to inspire more edge-based IoT security designs. We first present an edge-centric IoT architecture. Then, we extensively review the edge-based IoT security research efforts in the context of security architecture designs, firewalls, intrusion detection systems, authentication and authorization protocols, and privacy-preserving mechanisms. Finally, we propose our insight into future research directions and open research issues.
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Leveraging Data-Centric Edge Computing to Defend IoT-based Attacks in Power Grids
Internet-of-things (IoT) introduce new attack surfaces for power grids with the usage of Wi-Fi enabled high wattage appliances. Adversaries can use IoT networks as a foothold to significantly change load demands and cause physical disruptions in power systems. This new IoT-based attack makes current security mechanisms, focusing on either power systems or IoT clouds, ineffective. To defend the attack, we propose to use a data-centric edge computing infrastructure to host defense mechanisms in IoT clouds by integrating physical states in decentralized regions of a power grid. By enforcing security policies on IoT devices, we can significantly limit the range of malicious activities, reducing the impact of IoT-based attacks. To fully understand the impact of data-centric edge computing on IoT clouds and power systems, we developed a cyber-physical testbed simulating six different power grids. Our preliminary results show that performance overhead is negligible, with less than 5% on average.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1850377
- PAR ID:
- 10139607
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Computer
- ISSN:
- 0018-9162
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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