Security and Privacy for Green IoT-based Agriculture: Review, Blockchain solutions, and Challenges

open access articleThis paper presents research challenges on security and privacy issues in the field of green IoT-based agriculture. We start by describing a four-tier green IoT-based agriculture architecture and summarizing the existing surveys that deal with smart agriculture. Then, we provide a classification of threat models against green IoT-based agriculture into five categories, including, attacks against privacy, authentication, confidentiality, availability, and integrity properties. Moreover, we provide a taxonomy and a side-by-side comparison of the state-of-the-art methods toward secure and privacy-preserving technologies for IoT applications and how they will be adapted for green IoT-based agriculture. In addition, we analyze the privacy-oriented blockchain-based solutions as well as consensus algorithms for IoT applications and how they will be adapted for green IoT-based agriculture. Based on the current survey, we highlight open research challenges and discuss possible future research directions in the security and privacy of green IoT-based agriculture

Protection of big data privacy

In recent years, big data have become a hot research topic. The increasing amount of big data also increases the chance of breaching the privacy of individuals. Since big data require high computational power and large storage, distributed systems are used. As multiple parties are involved in these systems, the risk of privacy violation is increased. There have been a number of privacy-preserving mechanisms developed for privacy protection at different stages (e.g., data generation, data storage, and data processing) of a big data life cycle. The goal of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of the privacy preservation mechanisms in big data and present the challenges for existing mechanisms. In particular, in this paper, we illustrate the infrastructure of big data and the state-of-the-art privacy-preserving mechanisms in each stage of the big data life cycle. Furthermore, we discuss the challenges and future research directions related to privacy preservation in big data

Access Control Mechanisms in Named Data Networks:A Comprehensive Survey

Information-Centric Networking (ICN) has recently emerged as a prominent candidate for the Future Internet Architecture (FIA) that addresses existing issues with the host-centric communication model of the current TCP/IP-based Internet. Named Data Networking (NDN) is one of the most recent and active ICN architectures that provides a clean slate approach for Internet communication. NDN provides intrinsic content security where security is directly provided to the content instead of communication channel. Among other security aspects, Access Control (AC) rules specify the privileges for the entities that can access the content. In TCP/IP-based AC systems, due to the client-server communication model, the servers control which client can access a particular content. In contrast, ICN-based networks use content names to drive communication and decouple the content from its original location. This phenomenon leads to the loss of control over the content causing different challenges for the realization of efficient AC mechanisms. To date, considerable efforts have been made to develop various AC mechanisms in NDN. In this paper, we provide a detailed and comprehensive survey of the AC mechanisms in NDN. We follow a holistic approach towards AC in NDN where we first summarize the ICN paradigm, describe the changes from channel-based security to content-based security and highlight different cryptographic algorithms and security protocols in NDN. We then classify the existing AC mechanisms into two main categories: Encryption-based AC and Encryption-independent AC. Each category has different classes based on the working principle of AC (e.g., Attribute-based AC, Name-based AC, Identity-based AC, etc). Finally, we present the lessons learned from the existing AC mechanisms and identify the challenges of NDN-based AC at large, highlighting future research directions for the community.Comment: This paper has been accepted for publication by the ACM Computing Surveys. The final version will be published by the AC

Post-Quantum Era Privacy Protection for Intelligent Infrastructures

As we move into a new decade, the global world of Intelligent Infrastructure (II) services integrated into the Internet of Things (IoT) are at the forefront of technological advancements. With billions of connected devices spanning continents through interconnected networks, security and privacy protection techniques for the emerging II services become a paramount concern. In this paper, an up-to-date privacy method mapping and relevant use cases are surveyed for II services. Particularly, we emphasize on post-quantum cryptography techniques that may (or must when quantum computers become a reality) be used in the future through concrete products, pilots, and projects. The topics presented in this paper are of utmost importance as (1) several recent regulations such as Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) have given privacy a significant place in digital society, and (2) the increase of IoT/II applications and digital services with growing data collection capabilities are introducing new threats and risks on citizens' privacy. This in-depth survey begins with an overview of security and privacy threats in IoT/IIs. Next, we summarize some selected Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) suitable for privacy-concerned II services, and then map recent PET schemes based on post-quantum cryptographic primitives which are capable of withstanding quantum computing attacks. This paper also overviews how PETs can be deployed in practical use cases in the scope of IoT/IIs, and maps some current projects, pilots, and products that deal with PETs. A practical case study on the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is presented to demonstrate how PETs can be applied in reality. Finally, we discuss the main challenges with respect to current PETs and highlight some future directions for developing their post-quantum counterparts

Advances in Information Security and Privacy

With the recent pandemic emergency, many people are spending their days in smart working and have increased their use of digital resources for both work and entertainment. The result is that the amount of digital information handled online is dramatically increased, and we can observe a significant increase in the number of attacks, breaches, and hacks. This Special Issue aims to establish the state of the art in protecting information by mitigating information risks. This objective is reached by presenting both surveys on specific topics and original approaches and solutions to specific problems. In total, 16 papers have been published in this Special Issue