A DTLS-based security architecture for the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is part of the Future Internet. IoT comprises a huge amount of devices (hereinafter called as constrained devices) able to interact with the environment and to communicate over the Internet. Among other challenges that prevents the growth of IoT, the IoT is challenged for security issues. In this work, we are mainly interested in secure communication concerns for constrained devices. In essence, constrained devices are devices operating under low-power, and with limited computational and network resources. For such characteristics, they do not support standard security protocols and, consequently, they become a potential target for traditional Internet attacks (e.g., Denial of Service and man-in-the-middle). Thus, we introduce an architecture to enable constrained devices to use Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) with mutual authentication to communicate with Internet devices. Briefly, we propose a third part device called Internet of Things Security Support Provider (IoTSSP) and two main mechanisms: (i) the Optional Handshaking Delegation, and (ii) the Transfer of Session. Experimental results show the proposal feasibility and its additional benefits.