Secure Onboarding and Key Management in Federated IoT Environments

Abstract

Many high-impact Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios, such as humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, public safety, and military operations, require the establishment of a secure federated IoT environment. One of the critical challenges in the implementation of federated IoT solutions involves establishing a secure and authenticated key management mechanism. We propose and validate in a laboratory environment a novel federated IoT onboarding and key management solution. Our dl-mOT protocol integrates an efficient identity-based modified Okamoto-Tanaka (mOT) protocol with a distributed ledger in order to establish an anchor of trust between federation members.