Shielding IoT against Cyber-Attacks: An Event-Based Approach Using SIEM

Abstract

Due to the growth of IoT (Internet of Things) devices in different industries and markets in recent years and considering the currently insufficient protection for these devices, a security solution safeguarding IoT architectures are highly desirable. An interesting perspective for the development of security solutions is the use of an event management approach, knowing that an event may become an incident when an information asset is affected under certain circumstances. The paper at hand proposes a security solution based on the management of security events within IoT scenarios in order to accurately identify suspicious activities. To this end, different vulnerabilities found in IoT devices are described, as well as unique features that make these devices an appealing target for attacks. Finally, three IoT attack scenarios are presented, describing exploited vulnerabilities, security events generated by the attack, and accurate responses that could be launched to help decreasing the impact of the attack on IoT devices. Our analysis demonstrates that the proposed approach is suitable for protecting the IoT ecosystem, giving an adequate protection level to the IoT devices.