This document presents a research proposal focusing on the security challenges associated with the Internet of Things (IoT), emphasizing the need for robust security protocols to protect sensitive data. It outlines the growing concerns of data integrity and privacy, caused by vulnerabilities arising from inadequate device updates and weak security practices. The research aims to investigate these issues through systematic literature reviews and develop best practices for enhancing IoT security.

1. The convergence of multiple technologies has led to the evolution of
Internet of Things. However, the numerous merits of such technologies
are accompanied by various limitations that seek to compromise data
integrity and privacy of the IoT devices. Addressing such concerns is
imperative at both company and international levels. As such, the general
aim of this research proposal is to investigate IoT security and related
issues. The report also outlines the specific objectives that are linked
with the research questions to provide substance to this project.
Additionally, conducting this research is crucial as the concepts stated
can enable the users of IoT devices to understand how the lack of robust
and efficient security protocols can lead to the vulnerabilities of such
devices. The literature review section purposely justifies and provides
additional information for this research topic by providing insights into
the work of relevant authors in the context of Internet of Things. A plan
containing project activities is then formulated to aid the development of
a viable conclusion in the final dissertation.
Abstract

3. Internet of Thing's popularity has increased at an unprecedented pace. This relates to its
technologies used for various purposes, including; education, transportation, communication, and
business development (Bail et al., 2021). IoT entails the concept of connected devices of all
types over the internet, wireless or wired. Individuals and organisations can communicate
efficiently with one another from remote locations. This process is enabled by the
hyperconnectivity concept introduced by the Internet of Things (Thwaites, 2021). A significant
number of devices used by individuals or organisations to connect to the internet are IoT devices.
Internet of Things ranks amongst the most influential drivers of main technological trends such
as 5G, thus making the futuristic vision of various researchers on technological trends a reality.
Individuals’ lifestyles have been improved due to the introduction of automated services.
However, this report discusses how such uncontrolled explosions in IoT has created security and
privacy challenges.
The IoT system’s sensitive data has become vulnerable to cybersecurity risks and access by
malicious applications. This owes to the contemporary culture of lack of device updates,
ignoring a change of passwords and unconscious use of devices. Such inappropriate security
practices increase the probabilities of threats that trigger data breaches. Some information
technology professionals argue that the weak security protocols and policies affiliated with the
Internet of Things owe to its vulnerability to cyberattacks (Malhotra et al., 20201). The security
guidelines are not properly documented regardless of the development of various security
mechanisms to protect IoT devices from cyber attacks. Such mechanisms used to IoT security
form a fundamental point of discussion in this report.
IoT enabled devices have been used for multiple purposes in industrial applications.
The IoT based apps enable organisations to gain a competitive advantage over their competitors.
However, the adoption of devices with data sharing and integration capabilities has led to data
breaches and privacy becoming a primary concern for organisations as they disrupt network
services and work activities (Morris, 2019). Information technology professionals must
formulate security policies that improve IoT security to ensure stability and services continuity.
This paper strives to provide insights into various concepts that will aid the development of best
security practices. Additionally, it outlines the research methodology that encompasses collecting
and analysing the data that will provide substantial support on the formulated topic.
Introduction

4. General Security Concerns within IoT
Based on the legislative issues, research by Zareen, Akram and Ahmad (2020) educates that
effective regulatory frameworks are imperative to protect the users’ privacy, and a significant
number of IoT industry must be self-regulated. The argument further suggests that a formulated
regulation technique must be sufficient to effectiveness in privacy and security. Due to the global
nature of IoT, it would be imperative to enact an international regulatory framework. Research
conducted by Peppet (2014) also noted the need for security laws and regulations and stated that
the Internet of Things is related to national security, personal privacy and corporate secrets;
hence, a legislative perspective is necessary to foster its development.
Baldini et al. (2018) argue that enforcement mechanisms used to protect IoT devices are
insufficient or ineffective. This owes to the unavailability of host-based protocols such as
antimalware due to the heterogeneous nature of the IoT systems and inadequate resources on the
IoT devices. Additionally, the insufficient software updates associated with the IoT devices
poses a crucial security concern. Such updates should be an integration of traditional networked
devices. As such, the current firmware updates done per device and per manufacturer through
vulnerability patching is deemed ineffective. Lastly, the currently implemented security
mechanisms significantly rely on effective and static perimeter defences such as firewalls.
However, embedding IoT devices inside the network is currently considered an ineffective
approach. Research by Malhotra et al., (2020) also disclosed the concerns about the lack of
security updates on IoT devices.
Device authentication and identification is one of the primary IoT security concerns. A
significant number of IoT devices make authenticating or identifying a single device extremely
difficult. A lack of authentication creates the impossibility of ensuring that the data flow
produced by an entity comprises the right components. Research by Ndibanje, Lee and Lee
(2014) noted that concerning authentication, a problem in authorisation is a concern. Certain
access control is imperative to regulate the individuals and devices allowed to access a particular
network. According to Meena and Choudhary (2019), a minimal number of security protocols
offer privacy protection or access control features. The researchers argue that access control
feature is crucial In the Internet of Things. The study also reveals that data privacy is a concern
in the IoT. This owes to the possibility of various security threats such as; data modification,
unauthorised access, eavesdropping, unauthorised remote tampering with devices and data
forgery. For instance, the data collected such as insurance policy numbers, addresses and names
may be vulnerable to cyber attacks when exposed or transferred to cloud environments.
Literature Review

5. Potential attacks on Various IoT layers
Perception Layer
This is a physical IoT's layer that incorporates actuators and sensors to estimate speed,
temperature, and functionalities like questioning areas (Khattak et al., 2019). The crucial security
concerns in this layer owe to the appropriated composed structure and constrained hub assets.
The primary threats to the physical layer entail (Khattak et al., 2019);
Denial of Service: where an attacker may formulate the finite processing capabilities of the
nodes, thus making the system unavailable.
Routing threats may occur in the data forwarding and collection processes where an attacker
uses an intermediate malicious node to modify the routing path and engage the system in
additional activities.
Tampering: this attack prompts the physical presence of the attacker in the IoT system, the
primary focus being on tampering with hardware components to make the systems busy. This
is usually conducted via malicious code infusion and hub altering. In code infusion, attackers
can inject malicious code physically onto a node. This paves the way to access that node
from that particular IoT system. The sensor hub can be subject to harm during hub altering
by an attacker physically replacing its hardware component and entire node or alter its
sensitive information.
Application Layer
This layer avails services based on the user’s requests. Its significance to the IoT owes to its
ability to avail essential administrative services to the IoT applications (Alaba et al., 2017). As
such, various IoT environments can be executed on their application layer. The application
support sub-layer executes many administration services, canny calculations, and asset
assignment and can be implemented via cloud computing platforms and specific middleware.
The attacks targeting this layer are data leakages and DoS attacks (Alaba et al., 2017). Via data
leakages, the attacker can obtain sensitive information or secret code by identifying the
application’s or service’s vulnerabilities. The intruder can destroy the accessibility of the
application or administrations, hence, a DoS attack. This attack can also be conducted by
injecting a malicious code where the attacker uploads a malicious code into the software
applications. This then infects the system exposing the layer vulnerable to attacks.
Literature Review

6. Transport and Network Layer
These are system layers that provide universal access condition to the perception layer. The
network layer receives information from the perception layer and transmits the assembled data to
a certain data framework over access or internet systems (Li, Tryfonas, & Li, 2016). Based on
the authors, the attacks in this context entail:
Routing attacks occur during the data collection processes where the intermediate malicious
nodes modify the routing paths, thus infecting the system.
Spoofed Routing information: this is where the intruder relays, spoof or alters the IP
addresses to disrupt the traffic in the networks. The outcome of such an attack is a fake error
message, routing loops and shortened routes.
General Solutions presented to improve IoT Security.
Research by Ndibanje, Lee and Lee (2014) reveals various authentication models for the IoT.
The models suggest that the layers of the Internet of Things can be subject to authentication
techniques such as authentication by security token, authentication by global trust tree,
authentication by gateway and authentication by trust chain. The study further discloses that each
technique has its pros and cons. Research by Yang et al., (2019) reveals various privacy
solutions. This entails privacy by design, where users are prompted to have their tools for data
management. The research also encourages transparency in IoT to imply that the users should be
aware of the entities that manage their data as far as their data usage is concerned. The fault
tolerance solution provided by AlSuwaidan and Almegren (2020) reveals that fault tolerance in
the context of IoT entails; securing all devices by default, providing the IoT entities with the
capability to know the network's state and the services and the ability of the layers to defend
against network failures.
Literature Review

7. A systematic mapping study approach will aid the collection and analysis of the fundamental
pieces of literature. By using this approach, the research will provide sensible answers to the
formulated research questions. A systematic mapping study is a secondary study, mostly used in
the classification and thematic analysis of earlier researches (da Silva et al., 2014). Such a study
will classify and structure the particular field of interest in this research by categorising and
analysing the publications. Additionally, this research method can analyse the types of studies
that have been conducted in the context of IoT and the resulting outcomes. This research will
also adopt a wider secondary study called a systematic literature review. This will assist in
gathering and review of the past results on this topic. The research will review and extract
information from 38 articles.
A systematic mapping technique will be relevant to this research as limited literature reviews
have been conducted on this topic. Additionally, there is a need to achieve a general overview of
the Internet of Things. Both techniques will be used to identify the research gaps in the state of
the project and will follow a process created in the project plan section of this paper. Digital
libraries such as Science Direct and ACM digital library will be reviewed to provide data for the
project. Such libraries will be chosen since they are relevant to the field of information technology. The
objective of the article selection process will be to extract publications relevant to the systematic mapping
study's objective based on certain exclusion and inclusion criteria. As such, the following inclusion criteria
will be used to keep the number of articles realistic; published between the years 2010 to 2021, the topic is
IoT security and related issues, peerreviewed and scientific journals, the journals relevant to the formulated
research questions and articles written in the English language. As IoT security is a broad field of research,
the following exclusion procedure will be used to keep the number of publications reasonable; nonpeer
review journals and editorials, duplicates of already included sources and partially available articles.
Methodology

8. The knowledge provided by the research's aims and objectives will be
needed particularly to
provide answers to the research questions. They will create a clear link
between the research
project and questions that will motivate this research. The general aim of
this research proposal
is to investigate IoT security and related issues. This proposal also has
specific objectives that
entail the actions to be carried out in the research project. Specific
objectives entail:
To provide an overview of the IoT layers
To identify the general security concerns in IoT
To investigate the various attacks on IoT layers
To understand the various solutions presented to combat IoT security
challenges.
Aims and Objectives

9. This research focuses on an investigation into IoT security. As such,
feasible research questions
have been formulated to guide the research project by pinpointing
exactly what the research aims
to investigate and provides a clear purpose and focus. They entail:
What are some of the recognised IoT layers?
Are there any security concerns and challenges in the IoT?
What are some of the attacks that the IoT layers are vulnerable to?
What are some of the solutions formulated to mitigate the IoT
security concerns?
The above research questions will provide insights into the security
issues and security solutions
based on the review literature contents.
Research Questions

10. The purpose of this study is to investigate IoT security and some of
the security concerns. Some
of these concerns are attacks from intruders in the form of Spoofed
routing information, DoS
attacks, tampering and routing attacks that compromise the privacy
and confidentiality of the
information contained in the IoT devices. The study will also be
centred on investigating the
layers of IoT and use a systematic mapping study to review and
collect the relevant pieces of
literature.
Research Scope

11. The issue of IoT security has become an issue of great concern. This broad issue has
created the
motivation to investigate the various security concerns affiliated with this field. Various
measures have been set up to mitigate security and data breaches at the device level. Global
security firms are collaborating to secure the IoT world. A multinational like Microsoft has
entered the fray of securing the IoT devices by adding Bitlocker encryption to the devices
(Joseph, 2007). Such involvements form the foundations that motivated conducting this
research.
The IoT security concerns have also triggered new alliances, which has overseen a
conglomeration of established tech firms such as Vodafone and Microsoft to offer assistance
to
tech service providers and end-users. Security and privacy rank amongst the key challenges
facing the Internet of Things (Siow, Tiropanis & Hall, 2018). Conducting this research is
important as the concepts stated can enable users to understand how improper device
updates and
the lack of robust and efficient security protocols can lead to the vulnerabilities of the IoT
devices. As such, the research explores the background of IoT Layers and outlines the
attacks
and the corresponding security measures to secure IoT environments.
Motivation and Importance of the Research

12. Literature Review
Duration (days)
Project Plan Project Activities
2
Defining the research questions
1
Finding proper search terms(queries)
4
Searching articles on primary studies using search
strings on scientific databases and libraries
1
Applying the inclusion criteria to screen articles
1
Applying the exclusion criteria to screen articles
2
Extracting the predefined data from the selected
articles
3
Analysis of the extracted data to answer the
research questions
1
Presentation of the acquired results

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AlSuwaidan, L & Almegren, N 2020, ‘Validating the Adoption of Heterogeneous Internet of
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Bail, R de F, Kovaleski, JL, da Silva, VL, Pagani, RN & Chiroli, DM de G 2021, ‘Internet of
things in disaster management: technologies and uses’, Environmental hazards, pp. 1–21.
Baldini, G, Botterman, M, Neisse, R & Tallacchini, M 2018, 'Ethical Design in the Internet of
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Da Silva, FQB, Suassuna, M, França, ACC, Grubb, AM, Gouveia, TB, Monteiro, CVF & dos
Santos, IE 2014, 'Replication of empirical studies in software engineering research: a
systematic
mapping study, Empirical software engineering : an international journal, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 501–
557.
Joseph G Hodges Jr 2007, ‘Technology Corner’, Journal of Practical Estate Planning, vol. 9, no.
1, p. 9
Khattak, HA, Shah, MA, Khan, S, Ali, I & Imran, M 2019, 'Perception layer security in Internet
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Li, S, Tryfonas, T & Li, H 2016, ‘The Internet of Things: a security point of view’, Internet
research, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 337–359.
References

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Things: Evolution, Concerns and Security Challenges’, Sensors (Basel, Switzerland), vol. 21, no.
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