Practical Internet of Things Security - Second Edition

Access controls within communication protocols

There are different access control configurations that can be set in other communication protocols as well. For example, ZigBee includes the ability for each transceiver to manage an access control list to determine whether a neighbor is trusted or not. The ACL includes information such as the address of the neighbor node, the security policy in use by the node, the key, and the last Initialization Vector (IV) used.

Upon receiving a packet from a neighbor node, the receiver consults the ACL and, if the neighbor is trusted, then the communication is allowed. If not, the communication is either denied or an authentication function is invoked.