Alternative Security Options in the 5G and IoT Era

This article attempts to provide a set of new directions and ideas for research in the ever vibrant fields of telecom and IoT security. It attempts by no means to present a complete set of security solutions; this would be by definition impossible. It rather serves as a short but comprehensive introduction to various technologies and cryptographic techniques in the area of lightweight cryptography in our quest to address the security challenges in the IoT and 5G-connectivity era. We use the term lightweight cryptography interchangeably both for symmetric and suitable asymmetric ciphers, thus covering all aspects of traditional cryptography namely encryption/decryption, authentication, identification, nonrepudiation, integrity protection, and key exchange. Possible use cases that challenge the applicability of lightweight cryptography as well future projections for further discussions are also offered.