Russian Scientists Find Effective Ways to Protect Data from Smart Devices

The Internet of things is a new technology that is being studied at South Ural State University. The popularity of the concept where several devices are interconnected and can be controlled remotely is explained by its convenience in use. One of the main tasks for professionals working with the Internet of things is to protect data transmitted through the Network. The transmission, encryption, and storage of information that surpasses existing analogs in reliability was proposed by a team of Russian scientists, including scientists of South Ural State University. The article on the development of a new architecture was published in one of the most highly-ranked computer science journals, the IEEE Internet of Things Journal.

Smart devices need data protection

Smart homes, cars, and cities have long ceased to be a part of the future, but an indicator of the present. Technologies allow us to make human life more comfortable by ensuring the interaction of several devices of the computer network, sensors, and mechanisms. The concept of such a smart space is called the Internet of Things (IoT). Experts say the number of IoT devices can exceed the number of mobile phones in the world; the usability of this technology will be appreciated.

However, the connection between devices leads to higher risks of information loss. Since they are all transferred from one subject to another through the Web, the information can be stolen. For example, a smart meter can transmit information about when lights in a house are turned on and off. After analyzing it, it is easy to calculate the time when the owners are absent and enter the apartment. Threats can be larger and more serious, so specialists are working on designing a reliable IoT architecture. It should prevent information loss, a system crash, prevent a data breach that is difficult to predict in advance. An international team of scientists including the director of School of Electronics and Computer Science (HSE) of South Ural State University Gleb Radchenko and the head of the International Laboratory for Problem-Oriented Cloud Environments, HSE, Andrei Chernykh, as well as their colleagues from Russian Academy Sciences, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Tsinghua University (China) and the Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education in Ensenada (Mexico), proposed their own version of encryption and storage of data on IoT devices.

Scientists have introduced a storage architecture called WA-MRC-RRNS. Instead of one cloud storage, experts suggest using several. They may belong to different owners, and the proposed encryption method allows you to divide the information into independent parts that are downloaded to different clouds.

"Of course, when we observe the large-scale implementation of the Internet of things system in all areas of life, the threats can be widespread. Information loss, access denial, information leakage, collusion, technical failures, and data security breaches are difficult to predict and anticipate in advance. Instead of collecting all the data in one cloud, we proposed a different encryption scheme. It will allow you to place parts of the data in different cloud storage owned by different owners. Even if some of the data is intercepted, an attacker will not be able to recover information from a partial data set. If part of the data is completely lost as a result of the failure, such a scheme will allow recovering data from those parts that were sent to other storages," Gleb Radchenko said.

The scheme will be improved

To prove the effectiveness of the proposed data encryption method, an international team of researchers conducted a theoretical analysis of information loss, data redundancy, coding, and decoding speed. It turned out that when using the WA-MRC-RRNS storage architecture, the probability of data loss is less than in existing schemes, and the data transfer rate is higher.

In further studies, scientists intend to test the performance of the proposed scheme in idle conditions, malfunctions, as well as changes in parameters. WA-MRC-RRNS is waiting for a comparison with the already known methods of replication, erasure codes, secret sharing schemes, and error correction codes encryption.

The Internet of things has been studied for several years at South Ural State University. In 2018, an agreement was signed with Samsung, the world leader in the field of information technology and radio electronics, to open the Samsung IoT Academy and a unique training laboratory for studying the Internet of Things technologies at the Higher School of Electronics and Computer Science.

Significant results have been achieved in the creation of IT at South Ural State University. Research is developing with supercomputer modeling in the field of artificial intelligence, Big Data processing, storage, and mining.

Research in the digital industry is one of three strategic areas for the development of scientific and educational activities of South Ural State University along with ecology and materials science.

SUSU is a participant in the 5-100 Project, designed to increase the competitiveness of Russian universities among the world's leading research and educational centers.

More information:
www.researchgate.net/publicati … rity_and_Reliability

Provided by South Ural State University