Performance Characteristics of NTRU and ECC Cryptosystem in context of IoT Environment

Abstract

With the increased use of Internet-of- Things (IoT) devices for daily activities, the necessity of improving the speed and performance of such devices also arise. The devices produce sensitive data at a massive and rapid rate. Since the infrastructure available with such small-scale devices are constrained, an algorithm which provides better security performance and is faster within the constraints is necessitated. This paper discusses two asymmetric algorithms NTRU (Nth Degree Truncated Polynomial) and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), which are widely known to be secure. ECC is a popular algorithm and widely used because of its low-key size. However, it can be easily broken by quantum computers. NTRU is one of the most recognized algorithms that can resist even quantum attacks. It has less computational complexity due to simple polynomial operations. The need is for an algorithm to provide ample security while taking the time of the computational complexities into consideration. The performance of ECC and NTRU have been evaluated based on key generation time, encryption time, and decryption time. Text data provided by the small-scale IoT devices has been considered for analysis. The analysis gives a deeper view of both algorithms.