SUTSEC: SDN Utilized trust based secure clustering in IoT

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) technology consists of huge number of heterogeneous devices that create enormous amount of data. Providing a robust communication for billions of devices is one of the most significant challenges for IoT environment. Thus, cluster based communication is preferable as it promotes scalability. We propose an SDN Utilized Secure Clustering mechanism (SUTSEC) that provides benign cluster heads for the groups by considering mobility, priority, power and trust. SDN’s inherited characteristics are leveraged for providing a dynamic secure selection. Additionally, secure key distribution is also considered in trusted clustering. During these security operations we considered several issues related to QoS and QoE such as energy efficiency, reliable communication, lower latency and user preferences awareness. We performed simulations of our proposal in order to show the percentage of compromised cluster heads. Our results suggest that despite half of the nodes are captured in the network, 70% of cluster heads are benign nodes in our model. This means that SUTSEC performs well in preventing the election of compromised nodes as cluster heads. Additionally, we provide analysis for compromised links and connectivity of nodes in order to show the performance of secure communication between clustered nodes.