Foggy Security

The wide acceptance of the IoT technology and deployment of large scale IoT networks has led to it being used for diverse applications. This highly distributed sensor infrastructure is able to acquire vast amount of data, but the weight, power and size (SWAP) constraints limit the amount of processing that can be done by the edge devices. Naturally, the next step in the evolution of the system was to integrate the IoT systems with the Cloud infrastructure and harness its computing and storage capability to realize highly intelligent systems which could be used for purposes of enhancing Homeland security, monetization of data, Smart Agriculture, Traffic Monitoring and Control systems among others. It was seen that the large amount of raw data acquired by these sensors if piped to the cloud directly imposes a large load on the communication infrastructure. This led to the evolution of the Fog architecture in which higher computing power is deployed between the Edge devices and the Cloud at a location where the SWAP constraints are far less stringent. Consequently, processed information is sent to the Cloud. Quite a few of these applications require security of data to be assured while in transit as well as while at rest. The Tangle technology is adopted for ensuring integrity of data in the Foggy section of the network while the Cloud has its own mechanisms. Very little work has been done to address the end to end integrity requirements in Fog computing networks by researchers as of date.