BLEND: Efficient and blended IoT data storage and communication with application layer security

TL;DR

BLEND offers an efficient IoT data storage and communication solution that combines security layers, reducing latency and processing needs by storing pre-encrypted data, and supports PKI key management without protocol modifications.

Contribution

This paper introduces BLEND, a novel approach that unifies secure storage and communication in IoT devices using pre-computed encrypted packets, reducing latency and complexity.

Findings

BLEND reduces packet send latency from 630μs to 110μs.

It enables PKI-based key management suitable for resource-constrained IoT devices.

BLEND maintains security standards without modifying existing communication protocols.

Abstract

Many IoT use cases demand both secure storage and secure communication. Resource-constrained devices cannot afford having one set of crypto protocols for storage and another for communication. Lightweight application layer security standards are being developed for IoT communication. Extending these protocols for secure storage can significantly reduce communication latency and local processing. We present BLEND, combining secure storage and communication by storing IoT data as pre-computed encrypted network packets. Unlike local methods, BLEND not only eliminates separate crypto for secure storage needs, but also eliminates a need for real-time crypto operations, reducing the communication latency significantly. Our evaluation shows that compared with a local solution, BLEND reduces send latency from 630 microseconds to 110 microseconds per packet. BLEND enables PKI based key management while being sufficiently lightweight for IoT. BLEND doesn't need modifications to communication standards used when extended for secure storage, and can therefore preserve underlying protocols' security guarantees.