Security for the Industrial IoT: The Case for Information-Centric Networking

Industrial production plants traditionally include sensors for monitoring or documenting processes, and actuators for enabling corrective actions in cases of misconfigurations, failures, or dangerous events. With the advent of the IoT, embedded controllers link these `things' to local networks that often are of low power wireless kind, and are interconnected via gateways to some cloud from the global Internet. Inter-networked sensors and actuators in the industrial IoT form a critical subsystem while frequently operating under harsh conditions. It is currently under debate how to approach inter-networking of critical industrial components in a safe and secure manner. In this paper, we analyze the potentials of ICN for providing a secure and robust networking solution for constrained controllers in industrial safety systems. We showcase hazardous gas sensing in widespread industrial environments, such as refineries, and compare with IP-based approaches such as CoAP and MQTT. Our findings indicate that the content-centric security model, as well as enhanced DoS resistance are important arguments for deploying Information Centric Networking in a safety-critical industrial IoT. Evaluation of the crypto efforts on the RIOT operating system for content security reveal its feasibility for common deployment scenarios.Comment: To be published at IEEE WF-IoT 201

Internet protocol over wireless sensor networks, from myth to reality

Internet Protocol (IP) is a standard network layer protocol of the Internet architecture, allowing communication among heterogeneous networks. For a given network to be accessible from the Internet it must have a router that complies with this protocol. Wireless sensor networks have many smart sensing nodes with computational, communication and sensing capabilities. Such smart sensors cooperate to gather relevant data and present it to the user. The connection of sensor networks and the Internet has been realized using gateway or proxy- based approaches. Historically, several routing protocols were specifically created, discarding IP. However, recent research, prototypes and even implementation tools show that it is possible to combine the advantages of IP access with sensor networks challenges, with a major contribution from the 6LoWPAN Working Group. This paper presents the advantages and challenges of IP on sensor networks, surveys the state-of-art with some implementation examples, and points further research topics in this area

Quality assessment technique for ubiquitous software and middleware

The new paradigm of computing or information systems is ubiquitous computing systems. The technology-oriented issues of ubiquitous computing systems have made researchers pay much attention to the feasibility study of the technologies rather than building quality assurance indices or guidelines. In this context, measuring quality is the key to developing high-quality ubiquitous computing products. For this reason, various quality models have been defined, adopted and enhanced over the years, for example, the need for one recognised standard quality model (ISO/IEC 9126) is the result of a consensus for a software quality model on three levels: characteristics, sub-characteristics, and metrics. However, it is very much unlikely that this scheme will be directly applicable to ubiquitous computing environments which are considerably different to conventional software, trailing a big concern which is being given to reformulate existing methods, and especially to elaborate new assessment techniques for ubiquitous computing environments. This paper selects appropriate quality characteristics for the ubiquitous computing environment, which can be used as the quality target for both ubiquitous computing product evaluation processes ad development processes. Further, each of the quality characteristics has been expanded with evaluation questions and metrics, in some cases with measures. In addition, this quality model has been applied to the industrial setting of the ubiquitous computing environment. These have revealed that while the approach was sound, there are some parts to be more developed in the future

Context-aware Dynamic Discovery and Configuration of 'Things' in Smart Environments

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a dynamic global information network consisting of Internet-connected objects, such as RFIDs, sensors, actuators, as well as other instruments and smart appliances that are becoming an integral component of the future Internet. Currently, such Internet-connected objects or `things' outnumber both people and computers connected to the Internet and their population is expected to grow to 50 billion in the next 5 to 10 years. To be able to develop IoT applications, such `things' must become dynamically integrated into emerging information networks supported by architecturally scalable and economically feasible Internet service delivery models, such as cloud computing. Achieving such integration through discovery and configuration of `things' is a challenging task. Towards this end, we propose a Context-Aware Dynamic Discovery of {Things} (CADDOT) model. We have developed a tool SmartLink, that is capable of discovering sensors deployed in a particular location despite their heterogeneity. SmartLink helps to establish the direct communication between sensor hardware and cloud-based IoT middleware platforms. We address the challenge of heterogeneity using a plug in architecture. Our prototype tool is developed on an Android platform. Further, we employ the Global Sensor Network (GSN) as the IoT middleware for the proof of concept validation. The significance of the proposed solution is validated using a test-bed that comprises 52 Arduino-based Libelium sensors.Comment: Big Data and Internet of Things: A Roadmap for Smart Environments, Studies in Computational Intelligence book series, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 201

Supporting service discovery, querying and interaction in ubiquitous computing environments.

In this paper, we contend that ubiquitous computing environments will be highly heterogeneous, service rich domains. Moreover, future applications will consequently be required to interact with multiple, specialised service location and interaction protocols simultaneously. We argue that existing service discovery techniques do not provide sufficient support to address the challenges of building applications targeted to these emerging environments. This paper makes a number of contributions. Firstly, using a set of short ubiquitous computing scenarios we identify several key limitations of existing service discovery approaches that reduce their ability to support ubiquitous computing applications. Secondly, we present a detailed analysis of requirements for providing effective support in this domain. Thirdly, we provide the design of a simple extensible meta-service discovery architecture that uses database techniques to unify service discovery protocols and addresses several of our key requirements. Lastly, we examine the lessons learnt through the development of a prototype implementation of our architecture

Mobile Computing in Digital Ecosystems: Design Issues and Challenges

In this paper we argue that the set of wireless, mobile devices (e.g., portable telephones, tablet PCs, GPS navigators, media players) commonly used by human users enables the construction of what we term a digital ecosystem, i.e., an ecosystem constructed out of so-called digital organisms (see below), that can foster the development of novel distributed services. In this context, a human user equipped with his/her own mobile devices, can be though of as a digital organism (DO), a subsystem characterized by a set of peculiar features and resources it can offer to the rest of the ecosystem for use from its peer DOs. The internal organization of the DO must address issues of management of its own resources, including power consumption. Inside the DO and among DOs, peer-to-peer interaction mechanisms can be conveniently deployed to favor resource sharing and data dissemination. Throughout this paper, we show that most of the solutions and technologies needed to construct a digital ecosystem are already available. What is still missing is a framework (i.e., mechanisms, protocols, services) that can support effectively the integration and cooperation of these technologies. In addition, in the following we show that that framework can be implemented as a middleware subsystem that enables novel and ubiquitous forms of computation and communication. Finally, in order to illustrate the effectiveness of our approach, we introduce some experimental results we have obtained from preliminary implementations of (parts of) that subsystem.Comment: Proceedings of the 7th International wireless Communications and Mobile Computing conference (IWCMC-2011), Emergency Management: Communication and Computing Platforms Worksho

Analyzing Delay in Wireless Multi-hop Heterogeneous Body Area Networks

With increase in ageing population, health care market keeps growing. There is a need for monitoring of health issues. Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) consists of wireless sensors attached on or inside human body for monitoring vital health related problems e.g, Electro Cardiogram (ECG), Electro Encephalogram (EEG), ElectronyStagmography (ENG) etc. Due to life threatening situations, timely sending of data is essential. For data to reach health care center, there must be a proper way of sending data through reliable connection and with minimum delay. In this paper transmission delay of different paths, through which data is sent from sensor to health care center over heterogeneous multi-hop wireless channel is analyzed. Data of medical related diseases is sent through three different paths. In all three paths, data from sensors first reaches ZigBee, which is the common link in all three paths. Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX), Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) are connected with ZigBee. Each network (WLAN, WiMAX, UMTS) is setup according to environmental conditions, suitability of device and availability of structure for that device. Data from these networks is sent to IP-Cloud, which is further connected to health care center. Delay of data reaching each device is calculated and represented graphically. Main aim of this paper is to calculate delay of each link in each path over multi-hop wireless channel.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1208.240