A generic framework for defining security environments of Wireless Sensor Networks

At the beginning of its journey, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) were not built keeping security in mind. Along with the proliferation of sensor applications, the need for security in sensor networks has been increased. However, due to the resource constrained sensor nodes as well as its unique nature of communication, it is very difficult to use traditional security solutions for sensor networks. Some initiatives have been taken to introduce security protocols for sensor networks but they are not enough and are based on different assumptions. To be more precise, it is very difficult to identify which security protocol is suitable for which kind of sensor applications. At the moment, there is an urgency to formally define all the security environments (or security classes) for sensor a network so that a sensor application can identify all the security protocols belongs to its security class. In addition, defined security classes will certainly help in building good security protocols for each security class. In this paper, we provide a generic framework to find out all the security classes for sensor networks. According to our best of knowledge, this work is the first attempt to fulfill this urgency of sensor networks.