Design and Implementation of a Security Improvement Framework of Zigbee Network for Intelligent Monitoring in IoT Platform

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) opens new horizons by enabling automated procedures without human interaction using IP connectivity. IoT deals with devices, called things, represented as any items from our daily life that are enhanced with computing or communication facilities. Among various mobile communications, Zigbee communication is broadly used in controlling or monitoring applications due to its low data rate and low power consumption. Securing IoT systems has been the main concern for the research community. In this paper, different security threats of Zigbee networks in the IoT platform have been addressed to predict the potential security threats of Zigbee protocol and a Security Improvement Framework (SIF) has been designed for intelligent monitoring in an office/corporate environment. Our proposed SIF can predict and protect against various potential malicious attacks in the Zigbee network and respond accordingly through a notification to the system administrator. This framework (SIF) is designed to make automated decisions immediately based on real-time data which are defined by the system administrator. Finally, the designed SIF has been implemented in an office security system as a case study for real-time monitoring. This office security system is evaluated based on the capacity of detecting potential security attacks. The evaluation results show that the proposed SIF is capable of detecting and protecting against several potential security attacks efficiently, enabling a more secure way of intelligent monitoring in the IoT platform.