Self-Adaptive Multi-Agent LLM-Based Security Pattern Selection for IoT Systems

TL;DR

This paper presents ASPO, a self-adaptive multi-agent system integrating LLM reasoning with deterministic enforcement for resource-efficient security pattern selection in IoT edge environments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel LLM-based decision-making framework combined with deterministic control to improve security and resource management in IoT systems.

Findings

100% conflict-free activation of security controls

Resource feasibility maintained across workloads

Reduced tail latency and energy overheads by over 21%

Abstract

The adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) systems at the network edge of smart architectures is increasing rapidly, intensifying the need for security mechanisms that are both adaptive and resource-efficient. In such environments, runtime defence mechanisms are no longer limited to detection alone but become a resource-constrained task of selecting mitigation actions. Security controls must be carefully selected, combined, and executed under latency, energy, and computational constraints, while preventing unsafe interactions between controls. Existing approaches predominantly rely on static rule sets and learned policies, which provide limited guarantees of feasibility, conflict safety, and execution correctness in resource-constrained edge settings. To address this limitation, we introduce ASPO, a self-adaptive multi-agent security pattern selection that integrates Large Language Model (LLM)-based reasoning with deterministic enforcement within a MAPE-K control loop. ASPO explicitly separates stochastic decision generation from execution: LLM agents propose candidate mitigation portfolios, while a deterministic optimisation core enforces closed-world action integrity, conflict-free composition, and resource feasibility at every decision epoch. We deploy ASPO on a distributed edge-gateway testbed and evaluate it across two workloads, each comprising 500 and 1000 runtime security decisions, using replayed IoT attack traffic. In addition, the results demonstrate invariant safety properties, including 100% conflict-free activation, consistent resource feasibility across workloads, and stable pattern dominance with perfect rank preservation. Importantly, deeper decision exploration reduces extreme-case execution costs, compressing tail latency and energy overheads by 21.9% and 23.1%, respectively, without increasing mean energy consumption.