A Security Protocol Adaptation Layer for the IP-based Internet of Things

The vision of the "Internet of Things" (IoT) is an opportunity to connect previously unconnected devices and currently isolated networks to today’s Internet infrastructure. Recent efforts at the IETF and related standardization bodies aim at making IPv6 available to embedded, networked devices and corresponding networks [1] [2] [3]. These efforts are in parts driven by the goal of achieving a homogeneous interconnection between IoT networks among each other as well as with the Internet domain. However, fundamental differences between the IoT domain and the Internet domain prevent an immediate deployment of existing IP-based protocols from a conceptual perspective. This is also true for existing IP-based security protocol suites [4] [5] [6] [7], where design decisions regarding the employed security mechanisms commonly depend on assumptions about network topology as well as device and network capabilities. Likewise, security protocols proposed for the wireless sensor network (WSN) domain are tailored to the respective use case and cater for specific computation, memory, and bandwidth limitations [8] [9] [10]. Thus, neither standard IP security solutions nor WSN security protocols fulfill the requirements of both domains and, therefore, do not lend themselves to establishing secure communication between the IoT domain and the Internet per se. In this work, we outline where today’s IP-based security protocols do not suffice to meet the requirements in the IoT domain. Furthermore, we present our conceptual ideas on how to enable secure communication between the IoT domain and the Internet by means of a security protocol adaptation layer.