Holistic IoT Architecture for Secure Lightweight Communication, Firmware Update, and Trust Monitoring

Abstract

IoT applications have recently proliferated due to their applicability in several fields, as well as the growing number of enabler technologies. For this reason, the landscape presents vast deployments formed by end-devices with heterogeneous capabilities or requirements. Low-power wide-area communication technologies have partially filled the gap for low-bandwidth low-cost IoT devices that are placed in vast coverage areas without a power-grid or cellular signal. However, these technologies seldom offer interoperable solutions to manage security-related tasks, such as monitoring cybersecurity attacks or firmware update distribution. Thus, there is a need for a human-centric platform that enables trust-worthy management of large heterogeneous IoT networks. In this work, we present a solution that enables trust monitoring and firmware update distribution employing novel open standardization efforts designed for constrained devices. The presented solution leverages on LO-CoAP-EAP, a novel lightweight bootstrapping protocol, LoRaWAN, a widespread long-range communication technology, SCHC, an IPv6 header compression and fragmentation mechanism, OSCORE, an end-to-end application-layer protection, IPFS a peer-to-peer decentralized storage solution, as well as a Hyperledger, a distributed ledger technology for secure validation of the distributed contents.