Case Study on Future Generation IoT: Secure Model for IoT-Based Systems—Health Care Example

Mais Tawalbeh, Muhannad Quwaider

Jordan University of Science and Technology, Jordan

Lo'ai A. Tawalbeh

Texas A&M University, USA

Introduction

Over the last decade, physical devices in business, industrial, mobile, and home markets have been transformed from individual systems to interlaced networks. These networks can connect everything to the internet, communicating through different wired, wireless, and virtual environment technologies (cloud-based virtual connections). The process of associating and connecting devices with each other via the internet is known as the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT represents growing trends in the ways that corporate entities and individuals interact in their daily lives and operations, including many aspects of life: social interactions, education, finance, industry, transportation, and health. These trends display the shifting means by which people use the internet and how much impact it has on our daily lifestyles. This technological advancement in common utilities is becoming more noticeable and is an integral part of daily human life, where new smart devices are being introduced for individual and corporate usages.

Smart devices are used in our daily life, ranging from home appliances to complicated disaster monitoring sensors. More examples of these devices include: smart refrigerators, smart washers, smart monitors, smart medical equipment, smartphones, and even smart buildings [1]. And new applications are continuously being developed to enhance or adjust these devices’ features, in order to make life smarter and easier. A prime example of these advanced features is the content generated and data downloaded onto a user’s devices by applications that run in the background. The devices automatically send, receive, and store user data, with little to no input from those operating the device. Often, users are oblivious to the automatic functions of their smart devices and take for granted the simplicity and convenience of the autonomous operation of physical devices and completion of mundane tasks, such as ordering items based on user behavior [2].

The Internet of things (IoT) has been a significant research topic in recent years. It is estimated that there are more than 20 billion IoT devices connected to the internet today [3]. Moreover, the growth of connected IoT devices is expected to generate more than 79 ZB (Zeta Bytes) of data in 2025, according to the recent International Data Corporation (IDC) forecast [4]. With this rapid technological revolution comes the potential to change the way that daily life is carried out, as people can live and work within an interconnected world, where the IoT provides unlimited opportunities in almost every aspect of life. According to Intel’s IoT Framework Information Policy [2], the IoT will change global industries, creating jobs in transportation, utilities, manufacturing, health care, etc. This change will also require support from: high-speed networking, huge storage, and efficient computing resources to be able to transmit, store, and analyze the amounts of data generated. The utilization of IoT technology in different sectors is expected to result in great economic growth. CISCO economic research predicts that by 2022, the United States could take a 32 percent stake in the worldwide economy, just because of the use of the IoT [3].

However, despite the benefits of network-based smart devices, it is important to consider all aspects surrounding the IoT. As the IoT is adopted by more parties, the potential benefits, including economic and social growth, as well as the challenges that have arisen by the increased public and private sector usage of IoT-based technology, become more apparent [5].

There is an increase in security threats that face IoT devices, brought about by new hacking techniques, which exploit vulnerabilities associated with the wide spectrum of technologies used by IoT devices. Moreover, cybersecurity threats related to the IoT impact the applications running on it and the services they provide. These security threats pressure and pose a tremendous challenge for information technology specialists, application developers, network administrators, and anyone else working in this domain [6]. Accordingly, IT security experts must be aware of new attacks and implement the protective systems necessary to ensure secure IoT implementation and operational environments. On the other hand, there is the argument that applying more security measures will impose a trade-off between security and performance, which should be taken in consideration. In other words.

if more security algorithms are applied, the required speed and the requested performance might not be met by the IoT devices operating in certain environments. So, it is important to make sure that the IoT is not utilized in the wrong way and that it is enhanced in ways that allow the new technology to grow naturally. In order to ensure that the IoT is not abused, an in-depth information policy must be drafted, consisting of guidelines and standards surrounding the network-based devices, data gathered, data use, security standards, privacy, interoperability, legal regulations, economic growth, and ethical standards [7].

In this chapter, we investigate the recent work related to IoT security, challenges, solutions, and existing security models. Moreover, we propose a secure authorization model for IoT architectures. The model can be used to manage the user’s authorization securely on many IoT components in different applications. The proposed model is implemented in the Amazon Web Service (AWS) cloud platform. Among the services provided by the AWS platform is an IoT environment that allows the user to set up and test real and virtual IoT devices. As a case study to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed model, we address the health care domain.

The rest of this chapter is organized as follows: Section 2.2 presents some of the main IoT challenges, including security and privacy issues. In Section 2.3, we review- related work. Section 2.4 describes the main existing security models for the IoT. In Section 2.5, we propose a secure model for IoT-based systems, taking health care as an example. Section 2.6 concludes the chapter.