Claimsware: A Claims-Based Middleware for Securing IoT Services

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the ever-growing network of physical devices with IP addresses for Internet connectivity. Due to its ubiquitous nature and distributed architecture which includes devices, applications and humans, it presents a complex structure for security. Also, the incorporation of thousands of heterogeneous IoT devices with different characteristics into a single network creates the risk of security threats and privacy. This is where a middleware becomes significant. Middleware provides the platform services for various devices with different protocols to communicate with ease and provides all the functions intended for a particular task. Hosting these tasks as Microservices simplifies the job of an application developer. In this paper, we introduce Claimsware – a claims-based middleware for securing IoT services that are implemented as Microservices. The implemented prototype is evaluated in a local area network and in the cloud to test the feasibility of the framework. Performance results show the overhead of claims in local network and cloud.