Project factsheet information

Project Title Software Defined Networks based Security Architecture for IoT Infrastructures
Full name and acronym Prof Vijay Varadharajan and Dr Uday Tupakula
Address

Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment

The University of Newcastle

NSW 2308, Australia

Phone +61249218687
Fax
Website https://www.newcastle.edu.au/research-and-innovation/centre/advanced-cyber-security-research-centre/
Dates covered by this report: 01-02-2018 – 31-05-2019 –
Report submission date 31-05-2019
Country where project was implemented Australia
Project leader name Prof Vijay Varadharajan
Email
Project Team Dr Uday Tupakula [email protected]
Kallol Krishna Karmakar [email protected]
Partner organization N/A
Total budget approved USD 21,600
Project summary

There has been a rapid growth in the Internet of Things (IoT), with an ever-increasing number of physical devices being connected to the Internet at an unprecedented rate; recent forecasts suggest the number of IoT devices will reach 31 billion in 2020 [8]. These IoT devices are heterogeneous with different operating systems and connectivity capabilities ranging from wireless to mobile networks, often deployed in somewhat uncontrolled and untrustworthy environments, can pose significant and somewhat unique challenges in security and privacy.

The main goal of the proposed project was to develop a secure IoT architecture by leveraging the underlying features supported by Software Defined Networks (SDN). The project developed fine granular security policies and a lightweight security protocol to authenticate IoT devices and authorise them to access services in network infrastructure in a secure manner. The project involved three stages. In the first stage, we conducted a detailed study of security attacks on IoT infrastructures and the different security solutions that currently exist to counteract the various types of attacks. Then we analysed the pros and cons of the existing solutions, and developed security requirements that need to be addressed in designing security architecture for IoT Applications. As part of second stage, we developed a lightweight authentication protocol based on a novel public key encryption scheme. The proposed protocol achieved a balance between the efficiency and communication cost without sacrificing security. In the third stage, we proposed a SDN based security architecture for IoT systems. Our security architecture allowed specification of fine granular access policy constraints on communications between end users, devices and services in a distributed environment. A novel feature of the proposed architecture is its ability to specify path based security policies, which is a distinct advantage in SDNs.

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