Shortfall-Based Optimal Placement of Security Resources for Mobile IoT Scenarios

We present a method for computing the best provisioning of security resources for Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios characterized by a high degree of mobility. The security infrastructure is specified by a security resource allocation plan computed as the solution of an optimization problem that minimizes the risk of having IoT devices not monitored by any resource. Due the mobile nature of IoT devices, a probabilistic framework for modeling such scenarios is adopted. We adapt the concept of shortfall from economics as a risk measure and show how to compute and evaluate the quality of an allocation plan. The proposed approach fits well with applications such as vehicular networks, mobile ad-hoc networks, smart cities, or any IoT environment characterized by mobile devices that needs a monitoring infrastructure.