An Overview of Wireless IoT Protocol Security in the Smart Home Domain

TL;DR

This paper reviews wireless IoT protocols used in smart homes, analyzing their security features and comparing their strengths and weaknesses to guide secure protocol selection.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview and comparison of key wireless IoT protocols for smart homes, focusing on their security features and suitability.

Findings

Zigbee and Z-Wave offer robust security features.

Thread protocol emphasizes security and interoperability.

KNX-RF and EnOcean have varying security levels.

Abstract

While the application of IoT in smart technologies becomes more and more proliferated, the pandemonium of its protocols becomes increasingly confusing. More seriously, severe security deficiencies of these protocols become evident, as time-to- market is a key factor, which satisfaction comes at the price of a less thorough security design and testing. This applies especially to the smart home domain, where the consumer-driven market demands quick and cheap solutions. This paper presents an overview of IoT application domains and discusses the most important wireless IoT protocols for smart home, which are KNX-RF, EnOcean, Zigbee, Z-Wave and Thread. Finally, it describes the security features of said protocols and compares them with each other, giving advice on whose protocols are more suitable for a secure smart home.