IoT – Common security in wireless communication Technologies

TechnologiesSecurityDrawbacks
ZigBeeThree types of security: Control and managing who or what can view or use resources. Encryption Integrity
It provides security by assigning a mandatory network key to each device for proper authorization.
Network key assigned to different devices are fixed and cannot be changed later.
BluetoothIt provides encryption of data between sender & receiver.It has some common threats like blue jacking & bluesnarfing.

Blue Jacking: Sending unsolicited message in the form of business card, messages, or pictures. It does not steal any information from recipient device.

Bluesnarfing: It is the unauthorized access of information from a wireless device through a Bluetooth connection, often between phones, desktops, laptops, and PDAs. This allows access to calendars, contact lists, emails and text messages, and on some phones, users can copy pictures and private videos.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)It provides encryption of data supporting AES & DES symmetric algorithm.– It does not provide security to read information from tags because tags give information without verifying the authentication of reader. The attacker can make his own reader to collect
information.

– Even attacker can change the cipher text that leads to data integrity issue.
Wireless Sensor Network(WSN)It provides encryption of data.There are several attacks in WSN, such as
– Denial of Service (DOS)
– Distributed DOS (DDOS)
Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi)Authentication and Authorization mechanism– There is no proper encryption mechanism that may cause to change the message by attacker.

– Eavesdropping & monitoring data
Table 1.0

IoT Platform – OpenRemote

Description

  • OpenRemote IoT platforms enables connecting various network connected assets/entities/things to mobile and Web application.
  • OpenRemote platform architecture is split among following 6 major categories of IoT Solutions:
  1. Frontend
  2. Services (Manager)
  3. Agents
  4. Security
  5. Edge Gateway
  6. Console

Below table describes solutions provided by OpenRemote for above mentioned categories:

IoT Solution CategoriesFeatures/Tools provided by OpenRemote
FrontendFrontend simplifies creation and development of user interfaces that includes:
– Web Components & Templates for developing
browser based application & administration tool.
– Smartphone Apps for both Android & iOS

It also has some dedicated/pre-built frontend applications like:
– Multi tenancy based monitoring dashboard
– Home automation/Smart City based control panel
– Mapping all assets on map using asset model.
Services (Manager)Manager provides APIs of services or *headless applications to monitor & administrate the system. It provides following services:
– Asset management service
– State & Historical Data service
– Rules Engine
– Event Processing Engine
– Messaging Service
– Streaming Service

It provides APIs for following technologies:
– REST based HTTP APIs
– Websocket event based APIs
– MQTT event or protocol based APIs

Rules engines allows to write and understand the rules written using:
– Groovy
– JavaScript
– JSON
AgentsIt links the external devices or services with OpenRemote system. Agents supports proprietary and open standard protocols. It contains following two major components:
– Device Management
– Protocols Adapter
SecurityIt provides pre-integrated Keycloak based Identity & access management security that includes:
– Authentication (multi tenants authentication),
Single sign-on etc and also supports OAuth
authentication.
– Authorization
– Identity Management
Edge Gateway– It is a OpenRemote manager that connects to central
OpeRemote manager using Websocket API with proper
authentication mechanism.
– It also supports Keycloak identity management
solution.
– Edge Gateway has very limited hardware.
ConsoleIt is native mobile applications those are used by OpenRemote Web Component.
Table 1.0

* Headless Application functions without frontend or it exposes APIs.

Is it open source?

Yes

https://github.com/openremote/openremote

Supported Messaging & Security protocols

  • HTTP
  • *KNX (Konnex)
  • MQTT
  • *Simulator
  • *SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol)
  • Serial
  • TCP
  • UDP
  • SSL
  • TLS

Note:

*KNX is OSI-based network communications protocol that is primarily designed and developed for building & home automation. And it is managed by the KNX Association.

*Simulator: It simulates a connection to an external services so that development can be done without the availability of actual

*SNMP manages & monitors of devices connected in network.

Supported Networks

  • Bluetooth Mesh
  • Z-Wave
  • LoRa etc.

Supported technologies

  • Websocket
  • Velbus( A home automation system)
  • Docker
  • NodeJS
  • REST

Supported Languages

  • Java
  • TypeScript
  • Groovy
  • CSS
  • Swift
  • Kotlin

Supported Databases

  • PostgreSQL with GIS and JSON extension

Supported OS

  • Supports all major operating systems

Domains where it is used and can be used

  • Energy Management
  • Asset Management
  • Smart City & Mobility

IoT Platform – Kaa

Description

  • It is an IoT Platform which is available in following forms:
  1. In-premise solution (Anyone can use it for their specialized or customized solution)
  2. Cloud based solution (Kaa provides Platform as a service solution – PaaS for their customization solution)
  • Below are the two major characteristics of Kaa architecture:
  1. Modular Architecture
  2. *Microservice Architecture

This type of architecture offers below benefits:

  1. Scalability
  2. Extensibility
  • This platform offers below features:
FeatureDescription
Device management– Digital twining and records of such devices
– Filtering & Grouping of devices
– Accessing credentials and metadata of devices
CommunicationEstablishing communication between Device & Gateway to address below requirements:
– Authentication & Authorization
– Data exchange
– Multiplexing
Data collectionCollection & Storage of below types of data and automatic remote transmission (telemetry)
– Time Series
– Device Logs
– Alerts
Configuration managementDevice and overall system configuration data in small & large scale deployment
Command invocationSending on demand or time based commands remotely.
Data analyticsQuerying mechanism to analyze & visualize the data.
Software updatesContinuous software up-gradation
VisualizationWeb interfaces for below requirements:
– Data Visualization
– Device Management
– Platform Administration
Also provides customizable dashboard
*Multi-tenancySupport for accessing solution by multiple tenants
InfrastructureManaging and monitoring clustering operations
Table 1.0

*Microservice architecture enables split a large solution into separate small multiple services where each service is responsible for specific functionality.

*Multi-tenancy is an architecture where a single instance of software is used by multiple tenants (group of users). Multi-tenancy architecture is different from multi-instances architecture.

Is it open source?

Yes, but cloud solution is subscription based.

https://github.com/kaaproject/kaa

Supported Messaging & Security protocols

  • MQTT
  • HTTPS
  • TLS

Supported Networks

  • Sigfox, LoRa, NB-IoT, …),Near Field (WiFi, BLE, Z-Wave, …) Cellular (2G/3G/4G/…)
  • Wired (Ethernet)

Supported technologies

  • NodeJS, REST API, WebSockets
  • Business tools like SAP, Salesforce, etc

Supported Languages

  • Java, Go, and TypeScript (NodeJS),
  • Platform users implement their compatible and integrated microservices also in Python, Rust, Scala, etc.

Supported Databases

  • Databases like Cassandra, MongoDB, InfluxDB, and others.

Supported OS

  • All major OS are supported.

Industries where it is used and can be used

  • Automotive
  • Agriculture
  • Healthcare
  • Logistics
  • Telecom
  • Wearables
  • Consumer Electronics
  • Renewable Energy etcs.

IOT Connectivity Technologies

What are Radio-technologies (Radio frequency Range) used to transfer data among devices?

  • Bluetooth-BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy Protocol) Wearable devices generally use it i.e smartwatches, wireless headphones, smartphones etc.
  • RFID(Radio Frequency Identification) Primarily used for product information and location retrieval.
  • WiFi Medium range wireless data transfer technology.
  • ZigBee Wireless technology having IEEE 802.15.4 *mesh network standard, specially designed for low cost and low power IOT devices for reliable and secure data transfer.
  • Thread IPv6 based wireless technology having IEEE 802.15.4-2006 *mesh network standard, specially designed for low power IOT devices for reliable and secure data transfer. It enables access services on the cloud as well.
  • LoRAWAN(Low Powered Wide Area network) A wireless technology built on top of LoRa radio modulation technique that can be primarily used for IoT devices. AWS IoT core has support for LoRAWAN.
  • Sigfox A long range wireless technology designed for low power, low data and low cost data transmission for IoT devices.
  • LTE-CatM1(Long Term Evolution Category M1) It is for IoT devices connected directly with the 4G network.
  • NB-IoT (Narrow Band Internet of Things) It is 3GPP low power wide area network standard that is compatible with 2G, 3G and other 3GPP standards that are designed for wide area IoT devices connectivity.

Wireless data transfer technologies can be categorized based on range like WiFi, ZigBee and Thread are for medium range data transfer. LoRAWAN, Sigfox, LTE-CatM1 & NB-IoT are for long range data transfer.

*Mesh Network refers to network topology where multiple nodes are directly connected to each other without any hierarchy to efficiently route data.

Note: Low power consumption devices are mostly used in IoT therefore radio- technologies are used accordingly that supports or provide long battery life.. There is always a trade-off between low power consumption and frequent data transfer.