Section: Research Program

Security Trade-off in Constrained Wireless Networks

Ensuring security is a sine qua non condition for the widespread acceptance and adoption of the IoT, in particular in industrial and military applications. While the Public-Key Infrastructure (PKI) approach is ubiquitous on the traditional Internet, constraints in terms of embedded memory, communication bandwidth and computational power make translating PKI to constrained networks non-trivial.

In the IETF 6TiSCH working group, and through the work on Malisa Vucinic as part of the H2020 ARMOUR project, we have started to work on a “Minimal Security” solution at the IETF. This solution is based on pre-shared keying material, and offers mutual authentication between each node in the network and central security authority, replay protection and key rotation.