Secure and Efficient Lightweight Authentication Protocol (SELAP) for multi-sector IoT applications

Abstract

The growing use of Internet of Things (IoT) systems in daily life highlights the critical need for robust IoT security. Recent efforts have focused on developing methods to improve security, leading to many published studies. IoT systems face challenges beyond security, including energy efficiency and communication bandwidth, making security design complex. This article reviews recent authentication protocols, with a detailed analysis of one called ELWSCAS, exposing its vulnerabilities. We propose a Secure and Efficient Lightweight Authentication Protocol (SELAP) to address ELWSCAS’s security flaws. Using two Raspberry Pis, we measure SELAP’s computation and communication costs, achieving 422 ms and 960 bits compared to ELWSCAS’s 548 ms and 2048 bits. Simulations with NS3 further validate SELAP’s performance, showing 276 successful authentications in 30 s, compared to ELWSCAS’s 202, with 17% less delay. These results demonstrate SELAP’s suitability for multi-sector IoT environments with varying conditions and high device density, delivering reliable performance.