Leonardo Albernaz Amaral

The importance of a standard securit y archit ecture for SOA-based iot middleware

The proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT) in several application domains requires a well-defined infrastructure of systems that provides services for device abstraction and data management, and also supports the development of applications. Middleware for IoT has been recognized as the system that can provide this necessary infrastructure of services and has become increasingly important for IoT in recent years. The architecture of an IoT middleware is usually based on an SOA (service-oriented architecture) standard and has security requirement as one of its main challenges. The large amount of data that flows in this kind of system demands a security architecture that ensures the protection of the entire system. However, none of the existing SOAbased IoT middleware systems have defined a security standard that can be used as a reference architecture. In this sense, this article discusses the importance of defining a standard security architecture for SOA-based IoT middleware, analyzes concepts and existing work, and makes considerations about a set of security services that can be used to define a security architecture to mitigate the security threats in SOA-based IoT middleware systems.

Context-based search engine for industrial IoT: Discovery, search, selection, and usage of devices

During the past few years, with the fast development and proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT), many application areas have started to exploit this new computing paradigm. An interesting use of IoT is in the Industrial field, which has resulted in a new business concept called IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things). Another important fact is the number of active computing devices has been growing at a rapid pace in IoT environments around the world. Consequently, a mechanism to deal with this different devices has become necessary. Middleware systems solutions for IoT have been developed in both research and industrial environments to supply this need. However, discover, search, select, and interact with devices remain a critical challenge. In this paper we present COBASEN, a software framework composed of a Context Module and a Search Engine to address the research challenge regarding the discovery and interaction with IoT devices when large number of devices with overlapping and sometimes redundant functionality are available in IoT middleware systems. The search engine of the COBASEN operates based on the semantic characteristics of the devices, which is provided by the context module, and that helps users in their interactions with desired devices. The main goal of this work is to highlight the importance of a context-based search engine in the IoT paradigm and to provide a solution that addresses the proper management of search and usage in IoT middleware environments. We developed a tool that implements all COBASEN concepts. However, for preliminarily tests, we made a functional evaluation of the search engine in terms of performance for indexing and querying response time. Our initial findings suggest that COBASEN provides important approaches that facilitate the development of IIoT applications, which based on the COBASEN systems support, may perform essential roles to improve industrial processes.

The Role of Lightweight Approaches Towards the Standardization of a Security Architecture for IoT Middleware Systems

The evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT) requires a well-defined infrastructure of systems that provides services for device abstraction and data management, and also supports the development of applications. Middleware for IoT has been recognized as the system that can provide these services and has become increasingly important for IoT in recent years. The large amount of data that flows into a middleware system demands a security architecture that ensures the protection of all layers of the system, including the communication channels and border APIs used to integrate the applications and IoT devices. However, this security architecture should be based on lightweight approaches since middleware systems are widely applied in constrained environments. Some works have already defined new solutions and adaptations to existing approaches in order to mitigate IoT middleware security problems. In this sense, this article discusses the role of lightweight approaches to the standardization of a security architecture for IoT middleware systems. This article also analyzes concepts and existing works, and presents some important IoT middleware challenges that may be addressed by emerging lightweight security approaches in order to achieve the consolidation of a standard security architecture and the mitigation of the security problems found in IoT middleware systems.

Context-aware system for information services provision in the Internet of Things

In the last years a new computing paradigm called Internet of Things (IoT) has been gaining more attention. This paradigm has become popular by embedding mobile network and processing capability into a wide range of physical computing devices used in everyday life of many people. An important part that composes the IoT is the middleware, which is a system that abstracts the management of physical devices and provides services based on the information of these devices. Context-aware is an important feature of IoT middleware systems. This feature allows to discover, understand, and store relevant information related to devices and their respective events. In this sense, this work aims to present an ongoing system that has been developed to provide services of contextualized information about IoT devices in heterogeneous environments.

Context-Aware Systems: Technologies and Challenges in Internet of Everything Environments

The Internet of Things (IoT) and Internet of Everything (IoE) paradigms have emerged in the last years, thus generating new challenges in the pervasive computing area. IoT is a computing paradigm that has been recognized for allowing the connection of the physical and virtual worlds by giving processing power to the daily “things”. IoE goes beyond the IoT by breaking the barrier of just “things”. In IoE, the people, data and processes also make part of the connected world. Context awareness has becoming an important feature in IoT and IoE scenarios. Automatic decision making, sensitivity to context, automatic notification to the user, just to name a few, are some examples of situations where a context-aware system is needed in these environments where the characteristics of the data sources are undergoing constant change. In this chapter we present the context-aware definitions and architecture in IoE and it evolution from IoT. Moreover, we present the context-aware life-cycle phases, which is the process done in order to have context information. In addition, we also analyze the current context-aware approaches of IoT/IoE systems, and present some challenges related to context-aware IoE systems.

Middleware Technology for IoT Systems: Challenges and Perspectives Toward 5G

Middleware for IoT is the software technology that has been used as the basis for the development, management, and integration of both heterogeneous devices and applications in IoT environments. Despite the intended definition of a horizontal architecture approach (i.e., a common system approach to manage different application domains or verticals) for IoT middleware has been one of the main requirements by global IoT projects during the last years, the imminent arrival of 5G technology is revealing that current middleware approaches possibly will face some challenges due to new application requirements imposed by 5G (e.g., big data bandwidth and infinity, reliable, and efficient capability of networking, joining massive user experiences on mobile communications with multimedia sharing). In this way, this chapter not only presents concepts and architectural layers of IoT Middleware, but also helps in the identification of future challenges and further perspectives regarding the IoT Middleware ability to provide pervasive systems services able to cope with 5G-based application requirements in IoT environments. The intention of this chapter is to identify what will be the next step of IoT Middleware technology and also the R&D technological impact of this step toward the real maturity of 5G.

Protegemed2: an extended platform based on RFID to identify EME and improve the detection of microshocks

The use of electromedical equipment (EME) throughout the years has brought benefits in the aid of diagnosis and therapies as well as in surgical interventions. However, the equipment may fail and can cause health hazards, for example, the passing of a small but dangerous electric current through the patient (microshock). To prevent and minimize the risk of failure we propose the Protegemed2, an extension of the previous version called Protegemed, addressed in 2009. This system uses radio frequency identification to automatically identify EME and increases the performance of the system allowing a large-scale supervision of EMEs. Protegemed2 was built embedded into the gas and electric power panel of surgical rooms and uses an ARM 32-bit microcontroller.

Evaluating the use of TLS and DTLS protocols in IoT middleware systems applied to E-health

The evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT) has brought new security requirements in terms of communication services with respect to data transmitted in mobile networks. Although IoT middleware systems have been used to cope with the most relevant requirements demanded by different IoT applications, security is a special topic that is not mature enough in this kind of technology. E-health is an example of environment that exposes sensitive data. The security challenges regarding e-health applications are concentrated mainly on issues surrounding the communication layer, specially those cases where data are transmitted over insecure networks. TLS and DTLS protocols have been chosen by most of the existing IoT systems in order to protect such communications. However, none of them was designed to be used in IoT situations. In addition, none of the existing works analyzes their suitability to the IoT regarding the usage of mobile networks, which are common in real-world scenarios of e-health. In this paper, we analyze the use of TLS and DTLS protocols in IoT middleware systems applied to the e-health environment regarding performance (i.e., response time), overhead, network latency and packet loss when operating in mobile networks. We evaluated both protocols through a specific e-health scenario. Tests revealed the usage of mobile networks increases response time and overhead of both protocols, on average, when compared to traditional networks.

A sensing-as-a-service context-aware system for Internet of Things environments

The Internet of Things (IoT) will connect billions of devices deployed around the world in a near future by embedding mobile network and processing power capabilities into a wide range of physical computing devices used in everyday life of many people. Recent studies concerning IoT have addressed not only the interoperability of devices, but also the context awareness feature which makes easy to discover, understand, and store relevant information related to IoT devices. This work aims to present a Context-Aware System called CONASYS, a system able to sense the environment and to provide contextualized services to the users, meeting the users needs without specific knowledge of the environment, and improving the Quality of Experience (QoE). We present in details the architecture of CONASYS, the technical issues related to the implementation of the system, and evaluation tests.

Automated Decision Support IoT Framework

During the past few years, with the fast development and proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT), many application areas have started to exploit this new computing paradigm. The number of active computing devices has been growing at a rapid pace in IoT environments around the world. Consequently, a mechanism to deal with this different devices has become necessary. Middleware systems solutions for IoT have been developed in both research and industrial environments to supply this need. However, decision analytics remain a critical challenge. In this work we present the Decision Support IoT Framework composed of COBASEN, an IoT search engine to address the research challenge regarding the discovery and selection of IoT devices when large number of devices with overlapping and sometimes redundant functionality are available in IoT middleware systems, and DMS, a rule-based reasoner engine allowing to set up computational analytics on device data when it is still in motion, extracting valuable information from it for automated decision making. DMS uses Complex Event Processing to analyze and react over streaming data, allowing for example, to trigger an actuator when a specific error or condition appears in the stream. The main goal of this work is to highlight the importance of a decision support system for decision analytics in the IoT paradigm. We developed a system which implements DMS concepts. However, for preliminarily tests, we made a functional evaluation of both systems in terms of performance. Our initial findings suggest that the Decision Support IoT Framework provides important approaches that facilitate the development of IoT applications, and provides a new way to see how the business rules and decision-making will be made towards the Internet of Things.