On the Effectiveness of End-to-End Security for Internet-Integrated Sensing Applications

While realizing that most of the applications currently envisioned for the Internet of Things (IoT) are critical in respect to security, we may expect that such sensing applications may benefit from the availability of end-to-end IPv6 communications with Internet hosts. Research and standardization work is starting to produce mechanisms that may enable end-to-end communications using IPv6-enabled constrained sensing devices, and such communications will raise serious security challenges that must be addressed in the context of a proper integration architecture that is yet to be standardized for the IoT. In our work we target the fundamental question on the effectiveness of the usage of security mechanisms to protect end-to-end communications involving Internet hosts and constrained sensing devices. We describe mechanisms to enable security at the network-layer and at the application-layer and perform an extensive experimental evaluation study with the goal of identifying the most appropriate secure communications mechanisms and the limitations of current sensing platforms in supporting end-to-end secure communications in the context of Internet-integrated sensing applications.