Vulnerability-based risk assessment and mitigation strategies for edge devices in the Internet of Things

Edge computing envisages a distributed decentralized processing of data through a set of edge devices in the proximity of the data origins to improve the network latency and bandwidth usage. However, as the edge devices process important parameters that can often control the performance of the system, they become attractive targets of attackers. In this work, we address the security issues pertaining to the edge devices in the IoT ecosystem because of the existence of vulnerabilities in the network devices. We propose a multi-attacker multi-target graphical model for risk assessment, representing the attackers, targets, and the vulnerability relations in the network. Further, we propose risk mitigation strategies for securing the edge devices. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.