Multi-factor Authentication for the Internet of Things

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is integrated and applied in various domains such as Smart Home, Healthcare, Industrial IoT (IIoT), and others. IoT allows physical objects to be able to create, receive and exchange huge amounts of data at any time. The goal of such applications is to automate physical objects that will be able to function without human intervention or with minimal intervention depending on the purpose of the application. Because all domains involved involve the use of sensitive data and that data is usually transmitted over insecure channels, security and privacy issues arise due to potential cyber-attacks. This paper presents various IoT security techniques as well as the main security goals and characteristics. Three types of authentication schemes, one-factor, two-factor, and threefactor are then explained. Since authentication is one of the most important security goals, a special focus is on two-factor authentication schemes.