Establishing Trust in the Emerging Era of IoT

Abstract

IoT (Internet of Things) is changing the world. Today, we see that the Internet is reaching every bit in the world. IoT environment contains mobile devices, automotive equipments, and home appliances. Everything is sensed, actuated, and integrated into the Internet. Accordingly, the related problems are fast emerging. Considering the fact that the IoT is closely connected to human activities, and that the problems essential to them are tangled with traditional technical problems, it is quite natural that new challenges emerge there. Device control and privacy related security problems are their typical concerns. On the other hand, continuous efforts have been made for establishing trust in the untrusted Internet. Particularly, since it became clear that mutual trust was essential to securely and trustfully expand the market of e-commerce in the Internet, a number of technical solutions have been proposed and deployed. Furthermore, a kind of social infrastructure - trust frameworks have been deployed and are operated as the trust anchors in the Internet. In our work, trust establishment in IoT environments is investigated along the line of the trust framework in identities. First, our IoT architecture is proposed. Control and data service layer is placed on top of the device layer and the wireless communications. Trust establishment on the service layer includes that of device control and wireless security. Here, we consider "area"-wise trust, where its level is assessed in terms of device identification, monitoring of device behaviors, connection process to devices and connection protocols that are parallel to the assessment criteria in the conventional trust framework. Secure mobile network as the anchor of IoT trust is also discussed.