Cloud Security in Middleware Architecture

The new Internet of Things (IoT) has increased the need for computing, connectivity, and storage capacities as the amount of sensitive data grows. Since it provides on-demand access to a common pool of resources such as processors, storage, software, and services, cloud computing can seem to be a convenient solution. However, there is a cost, as excessive communications burden not only the core network, but also the cloud data centre. As a result, it’s critical to consider appropriate approaches and security middleware solutions. In this chapter, we define a middleware architecture to address security concerns and explore the general concept of cloud to achieve a higher level of security. Since it is designed to pre-process data at the network’s edge, this security middleware functions as a smart gateway. Data can be processed and stored locally on fog or sent to the cloud for further processing, depending on the information obtained. Furthermore, the devices communicate via middleware, which gives them access to more computing power and improved security capabilities, allowing them to conduct safe communications. We discuss these concepts in detail, and explain how this is effective to cope with some of the most relevant security challenges.

A Systematic Exploration on Challenges and Limitations in Middleware Programming for IoT Technology

In a distributed environment, such as IoT, the requirement for constant sensing and actuating from a diverse source of devices increases the complexity and therefore, the operational cost of the software required to keep the system running. The article covers the conceptual and technological aspects, together with a series of previous experiences, findings, and literature that constitute the essence of the body of knowledge related to the issues and challenges for developing a middleware that supports the IoT domain's independent functionality. The article provides the foundation to understand the challenges faced in the development of IoT middleware, focusing on five sensitizing elements, namely, IoT evolution, architecture, security, middleware, and programming. The systematic exploration on limitations for IoT software development revealed the need for programming methods and language abstractions to cope with the demands of IoT scenarios, specifically to deal with the challenges of massive communications, limited infrastructure, and multiplicity of devices.

Lightweight IoT security middleware for end-to-end cloud-fog communication

IoT (Internet of Things) based smart devices such as sensors and wearables have been actively used in edge clouds i.e., 'fogs' to provide critical data during scenarios ranging from e.g., disaster response to in-home healthcare. Since these devices typically operate in resource constrained environments at the network-edge, end-to-end security protocols have to be lightweight while also being robust, flexible and energy-efficient for data import/ export to/from cloud platforms. In this thesis, we present the design and implementation of a lightweight IoT security middleware for end-to-end cloud-fog communications involving smart devices and cloud-hosted applications. The novelty of our middleware is in its ability to cope with intermittent network connectivity as well as device constraints in terms of computational power, memory and network bandwidth. To provide security during intermittent network conditions, we use a Session Resumption concept in order to reuse encrypted sessions from recent past, if a recently disconnected device wants to resume a prior connection that was interrupted. The primary design goal is to not only secure IoT device communications, but also to maintain security compatibility with an existing core cloud infrastructure. Experiment results show how our middleware implementation provides fast and resource-aware security by leveraging static pre-shared keys (PSKs) for a variety of IoT-based application requirements. Thus, our work lays a foundation for promoting increased adoption of static properties such as Static PSKs that can be highly suitable for handling the trade-offs in high security or faster data transfer requirements within IoT-based applications.