Big Data Analytics for Internet of Things

12Data Security in the Internet of Things : Challenges and Opportunities

Shashwati Banerjea, Shashank Srivastava, and Sachin Kumar

Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology Alslahabad, Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, India

12.1 Introduction

The Internet of Things (IoT) [1] covers an environment where every object, be it a smart device (for example, a smart phone) or a dumb noncommunicating object (such as a street light), is able to connect to the Internet and communicate information. These devices may not only communicate the received data, but in some cases also have the capability to collect the data from nearby devices, store the data, and further carry out some initial processing on it. The producers and consumers in this ecosystem include human beings and number of different machines. The number of devices connected to the Internet has exceeded the human population in 2010 [2] and it is expected that by the end of 2020, it would cross 50 billion [3].

However, with the unprecedented growth in the number of connected devices, providing security, privacy, authorization, authentication, trust establishment, and access control becomes a major challenge [4, 5]. For example, a smart healthcare system allows a doctor to monitor the health status of a patient sitting remotely. However, in the absence of proper security mechanisms, the health record can be leaked and further modified, which can lead to dangerous outcomes. The adoption ...