Search Results (563)

We investigate secure data transmission in a unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted Internet of Things (IoT) sensing network, focusing on maximizing multi-sensor uplink secrecy capacity under practical power constraints and severe co-channel interference. Due to the coupled signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) expressions and the non-smooth secrecy-rate function, the formulated power allocation problem is highly nonconvex and mathematically challenging. To efficiently solve this problem, we exploit a novel mathematical reformulation by introducing a smooth approximation of the secrecy metric and developing a computationally efficient optimization framework based on sequential quadratic programming (SQP) with analytically derived gradients. The main strength of this framework lies in its low-complexity, deterministic nature, which eliminates the need for computationally exhaustive search heuristics while guaranteeing fast, stable convergence to a Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) point. Furthermore, we incorporate a robust worst-case eavesdropper modeling approach to guarantee secure communication under severe adversarial conditions. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed method significantly improves sum secrecy performance compared to conventional equal-power and baseline allocation schemes, proving highly scalable for real-time data collection in environmental monitoring, smart cities, and surveillance applications. Full article

Air pollution in Almaty, Kazakhstan, poses a critical public health challenge intensified by the city’s basin topography and seasonal thermal inversions that trap anthropogenic emissions. The sparse stationary network (~5 stations for ~2 million inhabitants) lacks the spatial and temporal resolution needed to capture intra-urban variability. We present the design, deployment, and field evaluation of a low-cost distributed Internet of Things (IoT) network of six custom nodes—Winsen ZPHS01B multi-parameter modules with Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W edge units, at an estimated principal-component cost of ~US$100 per node—operated during a winter-spring campaign (February–April 2025) and yielding over 70,000 measurements of PM_2.5, PM₁₀, CO₂, temperature, and relative humidity. The system’s novelty lies in three integrated engineering features: an Active Airflow Stabilization enclosure that decouples sampling from external wind, context-aware adaptive edge filtering that reduces transmitted data volume by ~40%, and a secure Edge-DMZ-Core telemetry pipeline. Node readings were cross-validated against a Qingping Air Monitor Pro with documented traceability to FEM-grade reference analyzers (R² = 0.89–0.95), and city-scale consistency was confirmed against the national monitoring dashboard; the network is therefore characterized as providing internally consistent low-cost observations rather than reference-equivalent concentrations. Daily mean PM_2.5 exceeded the WHO 24 h guideline (15 µg/m³) on 84% of monitored days, with February concentrations (54.4 µg/m³) significantly above March (21.9 µg/m³; p < 0.001). A high PM_2.5/PM₁₀ ratio (~0.96), measured at the physically consistent nodes, together with higher weekend concentrations, points to coal-based residential heating as the most likely dominant source. A coupled WRF-SILAM framework is configured for future model-observation integration. The system offers a reproducible, scalable, and cost-effective template for ambient particulate monitoring in resource-constrained cities with complex terrain. Full article

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks pose significant threats to Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) environments, exacerbated by the resource constraints of IoT devices and the disruptive impact of such attacks. Conventional detection and prevention methods fall short of ensuring the availability and operational continuity required in industrial deployments. This article systematically analyses artificial intelligence (AI) techniques for detecting, preventing, and mitigating DDoS attacks in IIoT systems. We examine diverse AI-driven solutions, including machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) models, alongside hybrid approaches that enhance real-time threat identification, adaptive defence mechanisms, and decentralised trust management, addressing the evolving sophistication of DDoS attacks. This study highlights AI’s potential to strengthen IIoT security and resilience, particularly in critical national infrastructure (CNI), where uninterrupted operations are paramount. However, challenges such as computational overhead, model interpretability, and dataset scarcity in industrial settings remain critical barriers. Additionally, the dynamic IIoT topology and heterogeneous device ecosystems necessitate context-aware AI solutions. This analysis underscores the need for lightweight, explainable AI frameworks and collaborative defence strategies tailored to the IIoT’s unique constraints. It emphasises the integration of AI with emerging technologies like edge computing and federated learning to advance proactive, scalable DDoS defence mechanisms in industrial ecosystems. Full article

Cybersecurity risk management is often complicated by fragmented solutions for threat identification and detection, vulnerability assessment, and control selection across multiple frameworks. This paper presents a unified, dynamically updated, threat-based cybersecurity control platform that addresses this challenge by integrating Information Technology (IT), Operational Technology (OT), and Internet of Things (IoT) standards, including ISO/IEC 27001:2022, National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF) 2.0, and IEC 62443-3-3. The platform enables (1) querying a selected threat to identify associated vulnerabilities, (2) recommending applicable security controls across multiple frameworks, and (3) identifying overlapping or unique controls to avoid redundant implementation. Automated integration of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) from the NIST National Vulnerability Database (NVD) links vulnerabilities to mapped threats and controls, supporting proactive risk management. A structured evaluation was conducted across 100 threat scenarios spanning IT, OT, and IoT domains, producing approximately 1000 threat–control relationships across 3 integrated frameworks. Performance evaluation demonstrates that the platform is scalable. While integrating additional frameworks, it maintains an average query latency of 0.40 s to 0.43 s, which implies an insignificant incremental latency increase of 0.03 s, while its web-based interface provides dynamic querying and visualization in a user-friendly manner for technical and non-technical users. By unifying threat, vulnerability, and control data, the platform streamlines compliance, reduces control retrieval time, and ensures traceable, consistent, and cross-framework mitigation strategies, enhancing informed cybersecurity decision making. Full article

Efficient management of soil–water resources is critical for global food security under intensifying climatic and demographic pressures. This review provides a comprehensive synthesis of artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed deep learning methodologies applied to soil–water interactions in precision agriculture. The physical and hydraulic foundations of soil–water systems—including water retention, unsaturated flow governed by the Richards equation, and soil degradation processes—are examined and situated within a unified framework of AI-based modeling and decision support. Classical machine learning (ML) algorithms (Random Forests, Support Vector Machines, gradient boosting) and deep learning architectures (convolutional neural networks, long short-term memory networks, transformers) are evaluated with respect to their capacity to predict soil moisture dynamics, estimate hydraulic properties, support smart irrigation scheduling, and generate digital soil maps at field-to-regional scales. Distributed training paradigms, federated learning for privacy-preserving multi-farm analytics, and edge AI deployment on low-power IoT hardware are assessed as enabling infrastructures for scalable agricultural intelligence. This review further addresses explainability, uncertainty quantification, and ethical dimensions inherent to AI-driven agricultural systems. Key challenges—including training data scarcity in data-poor regions, model interpretability, integration with physics-based hydrological models, and real-time deployment constraints—are critically discussed. Prospective research directions encompass physics-informed neural networks, foundation models for earth observation, autonomous digital twins of soil–water systems, and federated learning architectures aligned with data sovereignty frameworks. The synthesis underscores AI’s transformative potential for sustainable agricultural water management while delineating the technical and sociotechnical barriers that must be resolved to realize this potential at a global scale. Full article

Manual data storage methods on various mobile devices, IoT devices, and traditional computing platforms still lack sufficient security governance due to the absence of a unified security framework. Unlike application controlled environments, manual storage locations such as file systems, removable media, and IoT devices are highly susceptible to unauthorized access, misuse, and exfiltration. To address this problem, the paper proposes a security framework for manual storage systems using metadata, and the proposed framework includes three different algorithms, namely MARShield, ThreshGuard, and SentinelScheduler. These three algorithms operate together to ensure security for manual storage systems. MARShield is used for enforcing immutable metadata, multi-access rights based on tokens, and persistent source tracking by cryptographically securing provenance logs. ThreshGuard, on the other hand, enables the use of adaptive threshold-based misuse regulation and bottleneck-controlled serialized execution. SentinelScheduler optimizes the use of cryptography by incorporating trust-based application profiling and idle-time scheduling for heavy security operations. The proposed methodology is evaluated using a hybrid approach combining real-world datasets (CIC-IoT2023, TON-IoT, Bot-IoT and ISCX VPN non-VPN) and dataset-driven synthetic access pattern generation. Real datasets are used to model realistic IoT traffic behaviors, while additional synthetic scenarios are introduced to evaluate adaptability against evolving and previously unseen attack patterns. Network level features from these datasets are systematically transformed into storage-level access behaviors to evaluate metadata-driven access control. The experimental results indicate improved detection accuracy (94.6%), reduced false positive rate (4.3%), improved misuse control efficiency (92%) and scalability (94%). The proposed methodology for securing manual storage domains is scalable, adaptive, and portable, extending the security of applications and their associated domains. Full article

The digital transformation of agrifood systems demands an integrated infrastructure to ensure traceability, trust, and intelligent decision-making across complex and heterogeneous value chains. METROFOOD-IT, a large-scale national research infrastructure in food metrology aligned with the ESFRI METROFOOD-RI, addresses these challenges by combining advanced experimental facilities with a comprehensive digital ecosystem. This paper focuses on the IT kernel of METROFOOD-IT and presents an integrated architectural model that brings together four key technological paradigms: data acquisition through Internet of Things (IoT) and laboratory infrastructures, an Open Data Platform for interoperability and sharing, blockchain-based notarization for integrity and provenance, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for knowledge extraction and decision support. Rather than describing these components in isolation, the paper abstracts from their implementation within the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) project METROFOOD-IT to distill a coherent and reusable architectural pattern in which data management, trust enforcement, and intelligent analytics are tightly coupled. Five explicit design principles are identified and articulated: federated data with centralized metadata, selective on-chain anchoring, user-unobtrusive trust infrastructure, explainability as a first-class architectural concern, and machine learning as the backbone of decision-making. Two empirical case studies—one centered on explainable AI for hyperspectral crop nitrogen assessment and the other on IoT-driven sustainable agriculture monitoring secured by distributed ledger technology—serve a dual role: they motivate and shape the architectural pattern, and they exemplify the operational regimes the resulting design supports. A reference deployment on the Ethereum Sepolia public test network, grounded on an IBM Power E1050 and IBM Storage Scale enterprise substrate, provides quantitative evidence for the proposed hybrid on-chain/off-chain pattern with streaming hash-only notarization. The architecture illustrates how research infrastructures can evolve into integrated digital platforms that enable transparent, verifiable, and scalable agrifood systems, and offers a foundation for generalizable design principles in data-intensive and trust-sensitive settings. Full article

The digital transformation of tourist facilities requires careful selection of technologies that can provide secure, stable and scalable network infrastructure. Due to the possibility of application in different sectors with different specificities, the focus of the research was placed on the implementation of smart tourist services. A hybrid multi-criteria decision-making model based on PIPRECIA and MVA models was applied for the research. Based on the literature and the opinions of experts in the field, evaluation criteria such as bandwidth, latency, energy efficiency, security and privacy, scalability, costs and interoperability were defined, and internet technologies such as Li-Fi, Wi-Fi 7, Wi-Fi 6, private 5G networks, Ethernet-over-Power (EoP), NB-IoT and LoRaWAN were defined. The results obtained put the security and privacy criterion at the top (0.2253), followed by scalability (0.1952) and bandwidth (0.1624). The obtained results indicate that Wi-Fi 7 achieved the highest weighted score (4.2247), followed closely by Li-Fi (4.2177) and Wi-Fi 6 (4.0771). Wi-Fi 7 demonstrated particularly strong performance in scalability, interoperability and bandwidth, making it highly suitable for environments with high user density. Li-Fi achieved very high scores in security and latency, which makes it particularly appropriate for security-sensitive smart tourism environments. Lower-ranked technologies such as NB-IoT and LoRaWAN proved valuable for supporting IoT and monitoring functions, rather than as primary communication infrastructure. The proposed model has proven to be a flexible, transparent and practical tool for strategic decision-making in the field of smart tourism. In addition to the basic application presented in the paper, the model has the potential to be adapted to different contexts and expanded with additional criteria or new technologies. The proposed hybrid approach can serve as a useful decision-making tool for tourism managers, system engineers and urban planners who are looking for optimal solutions for the development of digital infrastructure. Full article

Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) based on the Internet of Things (IoT) form the backbone of modern smart infrastructures, including smart cities, healthcare monitoring, industrial automation, and intelligent transportation. However, connecting many resource-limited IoT devices makes them more vulnerable to cyber threats, particularly quantum attacks. This review comprehensively examines quantum-secure communication (QSC) frameworks for IoT-enabled CPS, focusing on Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), post-quantum cryptographic (PQC) algorithms, and hybrid quantum–classical security models suitable for constrained devices. A PRISMA-guided search of the Scopus and Google Scholar database was conducted in January 2026 using three keyword groups related to hybrid security, artificial intelligence, and cyber-physical systems. Based on the evaluation, 6008 publications have been identified between 2001 and 2026. The first-round screening was performed for 4948 articles, after excluding duplicates. During the screening stage, 348 articles were selected for abstract scrutiny, 115 records were excluded due to no direct focus on CPS/IoT applications, 52 studies were excluded because these papers relied on traditional security models, 25 studies were excluded due to insufficient relevance to the review objectives, and 15 additional non-English studies were removed. Following the screening stage, 141 studies were selected for full-text eligibility. Out of those, 86 studies were removed due to a lack of specific evaluation metrics or not being published in a peer-reviewed venue. Furthermore, the publications are classified as QKD-based secure CPS and QSC for industrial IoT, AI-Assisted Secure Communication for CPS Networks, and hybrid PQC-QKD models for CPS/IoT devices. This article investigates recent advancements in secure data transmission, verified protocols, and AI-driven anomaly detection customized to CPS/IoT environments. In addition, operational hurdles, interaction with open innovations, real-time deployment, and secure edge-cloud integration are highlighted. By analyzing recent developments and identifying research gaps, this review provides a structured roadmap for designing secure, scalable, and quantum-safe IoT-based CPS frameworks capable of withstanding next-generation cyber threats. This systematic review was performed and reported according to the PRISMA 2020 guidelines. Full article

In recent years, organisations have increasingly transitioned their workloads from on-premise infrastructures to cloud environments, while leveraging edge computing to meet the rising demand for scalable and distributed applications. This shift has accelerated the adoption of IoT devices, which play a key role in enabling these systems. As a result, ensuring the security of sensitive IoT applications has become critical, motivating the use of Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) to provide isolated execution even in the presence of potentially compromised operating systems. This work focuses on the IoT-oriented Keystone Enclave framework, an open-source TEE built on the RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture. Among its security features, Keystone implements a binary measurement mechanism during the enclave-loading phase. However, this approach guarantees application integrity only at load time, leaving the TEE’s confidentiality and integrity vulnerable to runtime exploitation of software vulnerabilities. To address this limitation, we propose an integrity verification mechanism that provides evidence about the state of sensitive memory regions throughout enclave execution. Compared to traditional load-time measurement techniques, our approach reduces per-execution measurement overhead by 57.5%, while requiring minimal extensions to the Trusted Computing Base. Furthermore, it overcomes key limitations of the existing framework by decoupling enclave applications from the attestation logic. Full article

Industry 4.0 is speeding up the move to connected, data-driven, and automated production, where the Internet of Things (IoT) enables sensing, communication, and real-time support for decisions. At the same time, rapid growth in industrial IoT studies has led to scattered technologies, architectures, and results. This paper fills this gap through a systematic literature review on IoT for Industry 4.0. It also helps readers compare methods and choose suitable building blocks for real deployments today. We focus on key technologies, integration architectures, application areas, challenges, trends, and reported benefits. Using PRISMA 2020, we searched five major databases (Scopus, MDPI, IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, and Web of Science) for 2020–2025 and found 584 records. After removing duplicates and screening, we kept 96 peer-reviewed studies for detailed analysis. Results show that most studies use a layered stack that combines sensing/actuation, industrial networking, data collection pipelines, and analytics across edge, fog, and cloud resources. MQTT, OPC UA, CoAP, LPWAN, and 5G connectivity are often used for communication, while RAMI 4.0, IIRA, and similar layered models guide system design. Many architectures follow an edge–cloud pattern, with growing focus on digital twin/CPS links and security-by-design. Applications are mainly smart manufacturing, predictive maintenance, and logistics, with added work in energy management, Construction 4.0, and agri-food monitoring. The key barriers remain interoperability, data quality and evaluation gaps, cybersecurity risks, legacy integration, and deployment limits. The review points to future work on edge AI/TinyML, deterministic connectivity, scalable digital twins, trusted data sharing, and sustainable industrial IoT. Full article

The rapid advancement of quantum computing poses a fundamental threat to classical public-key cryptographic systems, necessitating the transition to post-quantum cryptography (PQC). While significant progress has been made in the standardization of quantum-resistant algorithms, their practical deployment in heterogeneous environments—particularly resource-constrained Internet of Things (IoT) devices—remains a critical challenge. This study presents a comprehensive experimental evaluation of four NIST-standardized PQC algorithms: CRYSTALS-Kyber (ML-KEM), CRYSTALS-Dilithium (ML-DSA), FALCON, and SPHINCS+. The scope of these findings is bounded by an empirical analysis conducted across two specific testing platforms, a high-performance x86-64 workstation (AMD Ryzen 7 5700U) and a resource-constrained embedded microcontroller (ESP32-WROOM), utilizing dedicated software environments implemented in Native C, Go, and Python. The evaluation isolates key performance indicators, including computational latency, memory consumption, communication overhead, and temporal determinism, based on benchmarking over 1000 iterations. Within this experimental setup, results demonstrate clear trade-offs between target security categories, execution performance, and structural memory limits. Lattice-based schemes such as Kyber and Falcon exhibit optimal efficiency and scalability on the tested embedded platform, while the specific memory limits of the ESP32 platform introduce architectural stability constraints for higher-tier Dilithium variants. In contrast, SPHINCS+ provides structural robustness at the cost of higher computational hashing latency within these evaluation environments. The findings highlight the critical role of hardware-specific constraints and language runtime design choices in enabling practical PQC deployment, providing context-specific insights supporting the secure migration of IoT infrastructures toward quantum-resilient systems. Full article

The increasing pace of Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications has exacerbated the security challenges in resource-constrained environments, where traditional cryptographic protocols incur prohibitively high computational and energy costs. These constraints are also worsened by the advent of quantum computing, which poses a long-term security risk to popular crypto-key cryptographic-based efforts. To overcome these difficulties, this paper proposes an Energy-Efficient Cryptographic Protocol Framework (EECPF) that provides mutual optimization between energy consumption, security level, and communication latency to achieve sustainable IoT security. The presented framework proposes an adaptive encryption selection mechanism that dynamically chooses cryptographic algorithms depending on device capabilities, network conditions, and threat levels derived from intrusion detection outputs. EECPF combines privacy-preserving federated learning for distributed intrusion detection with collaborative threat intelligence sharing, eliminating centralized data sharing. In addition, lattice-based post-quantum cryptography primitives are added and combined with lightweight blockchain-enforced identity management to ensure long-term authentication resilience. The models on which the framework is based are mathematically based, modeling the consumption of energy, the robustness of security, and latency, providing principled multi-objective optimization under resource constraints. The publicly available Edge-IIoTset dataset was subjected to extensive experimental assessment under realistic IIoT and IoT attack scenarios. Experiments show that EECPF can reach an intrusion detection rate of 94.7%, while reducing energy consumption by 47.3% and latency by 23.8% compared with other commonly used lightweight cryptographic methods. These were continually noticed across different heterogeneous devices and deployment environments. In general, EECPF offers an energy-aware, quantum-resilient, and scalable security solution that can be used for next-generation IoT systems, such as smart healthcare, industrial automation, and smart city infrastructures. Full article

The convergence of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Blockchain (BC) creates a symbiotic relationship in which SDN’s programmable global visibility complements BC’s decentralized, immutable trust model to address critical cybersecurity vulnerabilities and cyber attacks. Addressing the fragmentation in the current literature, this study rigorously investigates BC and SDN (B-SDN) integration with the primary objectives of: (1) differentiating impacts across varied sectors, including the Internet of Things (IoT), Smart Grids, and Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) and more; (2) analyzing critical performance metrics such as energy efficiency and scalability; (3) classifying mitigation, detection, and prevention schemes for specific threats; (4) examining novel Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods; and (5) identifying open challenges and future research directions. Methodologically, this study conducts a survey of state-of-the-art B-SDN studies to investigate six key areas: Industry-specific applications, security mechanisms, defense strategies, defenses against specific attacks, AI integration, and implementation performance. The findings demonstrate that B-SDN integration shows strong potential in simulated and prototype environments to mitigate specific high-impact threats, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), Man-in-the-Middle (MiTM), and spoofing, across various domains, including IoT, 5G/6G, VANETS, and Smart Grid. Despite the benefits and advantages promised by B-SDN, several limitations continue to exist, including the latency–security trade-off inherent to consensus protocols and scalability constraints in large-scale deployments. Finally, open research challenges persist in AI-driven automation, particularly in Federated Learning (FL) and in the development of standardized interoperability protocols required to enable the transition from conceptual models to operational systems. Full article

The rapid proliferation of Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) devices necessitates robust, privacy-preserving intrusion detection systems. While Federated Learning (FL) mitigates data privacy risks through localized training, it introduces vulnerabilities to model poisoning and computational bottlenecks on edge devices. To address these challenges, we propose a secure, hardware-optimized Blockchain-Federated Learning (BC-FL) framework. Deploying a lightweight Hybrid CNN-RNN model on Edge Gateways, we relieve end-sensors of heavy computational tasks. To overcome the ‘cold-start’ problem, we introduce a Domain-Adaptive Transfer Learning strategy, dynamically adapting a pre-trained binary classifier to a multi-class task (Normal, Mirai, Bashlite). Furthermore, a lightweight blockchain ledger provides an immutable audit trail and a reputation-based isolation mechanism to penalize malicious nodes. Evaluated on the N-BaIoT dataset, the proposed 3-class CNN-RNN model achieves 95.62% overall accuracy, with precision/recall/F1-scores of 0.99/0.91/0.95 for Mirai and 0.93/0.99/0.96 for Bashlite attacks. The framework reduces communication bandwidth by 96% compared to centralized learning. During simulated Byzantine attacks, the reputation mechanism successfully banned malicious nodes, maintaining a robust 95.62% global accuracy. This framework offers a highly scalable, secure, and computationally feasible solution for real-time anomaly detection in resource-constrained IoT edge environments. Full article