Security in the internet of things: Trust and reputation evaluation model

Abstract

Trust and reputation are vital in IoT because they enable entities to communicate or collaborate securely. Reputation minimizes uncertainty and risk. An entity’s reputation is computed from recommendations obtained from all the entities that have interacted with the entity and this enables entities without prior experience to interact. This paper proposes a reputation model for the IoT environment based on fuzzy logic. Fuzzy logic was chosen because of its ability to handle imprecise and uncertain information. The fuzzy inference system takes in reputation properties and outputs the reputation value. The properties from multiple recommenders are combined into a single value before the values are fed into the fuzzy inference system. The results obtained from the model reveals that the model is effective in identifying malicious entities within IoT environments. The results imply that a reputation system can be used to support decision making in an IoT environment.