A New Security Layer for Improving the security of internet of things (IoT)

Abstract

Recently, various improvements were conducted in the field of both Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) and Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) technologies. This results in creating various efficient concepts to enhance the daily life, such as the deployment of the Internet of Things (IoT) concept in unconventional applications. However, this IoT is subject to some restrictions, such as the use of specific communication models and the complexity due to the exchange of information among various heterogeneous devices that located in several contexts. Thus, the implementation of scalable, interoperable and effective security mechanisms is a real challenge. In this paper, an independent single security layer is proposed to meet and manage the majority of security mechanisms distributed over other network layers. This layer could be used to verify the identity of both receiver and sender to assist in avoiding attacks. In addition, it assists other communication reference model layers of the IoT to carry out their functions regardless of security problems. The Network Simulator (NS2) was used to evaluate the suggested layer in terms of end-to-end delay, throughput, packet dropped, Normalized Routing Load (NRL) and Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR). The simulated results showed that adding the new security layer could either improve the performance of the traditional communication models or in other cases offered the same performance.