Architectural Threats to Security and Privacy: A Challenge for Internet of Things (IoT) Applications

The internet of things (IoT) is one of the growing platforms of the current era that has encircled a large population into its domain, and life appears to be useless without adopting this technology. A significant amount of data is generated from an immense number of smart devices and their allied applications that are constructively utilized to automate our daily life activities. This big data requires fast processing, storage, and safe passage through secure channels to safeguard it from any malicious attacks. In such a situation, security is considered crucial to protect the technological resources from unauthorized access or any interruption to disrupt the seamless and ubiquitous connectivity of the IoT from the perception layer to cloud computers. Motivated by this, this article demonstrates a general overview about the technology and layered architecture of the IoT followed by critical applications with a particular focus on key features of smart homes, smart agriculture, smart transportation, and smart healthcare. Next, security threats and vulnerabilities included with attacks on each layer of the IoT are explicitly elaborated. The classification of security challenges such as confidentiality, integrity, privacy, availability, authentication, non-repudiation, and key management is thoroughly reviewed. Finally, future research directions for security concerns are identified and presented.