Secure deployment of IoT systems

Abstract

When it comes to intelligent security for computer systems, reducing the attack surface is critical. In fact, ensuring that the attack surface is as small as possible is a basic security measure.

An organization's attack surface is the sum of vulnerabilities, pathways, or methods (sometimes called attack vectors) that attackers can use to gain unauthorized access to the network or sensitive data, or to perpetuate a cyberattack. Security experts divide the attack surface into three sub-surfaces: the digital attack surface, the physical attack surface, and the social engineering attack surface.

The physical attack surface exposes assets and information generally accessible only to users with authorized access to an organization's physical endpoint or office devices (servers, computers, mobile devices, IoT devices, operating hardware).

This work proposes, based on the Fog Computing paradigm, that programmable logic devices such as FPGAs, with reconfiguration capabilities and great computational power, are a development alternative for reducing the attack surface presented by the secure implementation of IoT systems.