An Efficient Key Management Technique for the Internet of Things

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Cybersecurity
• Network Engineering

Background:

• The Internet of Things (IoT) presents significant opportunities but faces critical security challenges, particularly in protecting data generated by devices and during transit.
• Securing data exchange across diverse nodes and gateways in IoT environments remains a complex issue.
• Growing demand from customers, regulators, and industry partners necessitates robust IoT security solutions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose an efficient key management technique for securing the Internet of Things (IoT) environment.
• To enhance the security of data transmission in IoT networks.
• To address the challenges of protecting data generated by IoT devices and safeguarding its exchange.

Main Methods:

• Developed a novel key management technique combining symmetric and asymmetric cryptosystems for IoT data transmission.
• Utilized Smart Objects (SO) for key registration, generation, and distribution.
• Employed the open-source Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol for communication between source and destination nodes.

Main Results:

• The proposed technique offers the speed of symmetric cryptosystems and the security benefits of asymmetric cryptosystems.
• Experimental evaluation demonstrates comparable performance to existing methods in key conversion time, algorithm execution time, connection reuse, and bandwidth utilization.
• The approach ensures a safer IoT environment through efficient key management.

Conclusions:

• The hybrid cryptosystem approach provides an efficient and secure solution for IoT key management.
• The proposed technique effectively safeguards data transmission in IoT networks.
• The method is suitable for practical implementation in diverse IoT applications, enhancing overall system security.