A Security Assessment Platform for Stochastic Petri Net (SPN) Modelling in the Internet of Things (IoT) Ecosystem

An Internet of Things (IoT)-based service includes several devices and applications. A service’s security depends on the vulnerabilities of its individual components. Thus, because a security assessment is of high importance, it starts to be conducted in the design phase of the service’s model. The Stochastic Petri net (SPN) modelling method can sufficiently depict the complexity and the unpredictability in terms of the time and the sequence of the events in an IoT service. Therefore, the SPN model can form the appropriate basis of a security assessment method. In this chapter, we propose an ADOxx-based modelling tool, the SAPnet, which includes the ontology toolkit for SPN modelling enriched with the tools that enable the necessary security assessment. SAPnet provides a modeler-friendly interface for the composition and updating of the security vulnerabilities list that affects the model, as well as fast and accurate results regarding the security metrics of the model, at any point of the design phase. The functionalities of SAPnet are tested in the security assessment of iBuC, an IoT-based novel transportation service. More specifically, we evaluate the security of iBuC’s fleet management in two customised real-life scenarios. We observed that SAPnet provides fast and accurate results and visual aids to the modeler during the design and security assessment process.