Cloud-Assisted Security Framework for Drone-Enabled Offshore Communications

Maritime transport industry is a targeted sector for cyber security attacks as due to the inherent risks of transferring sensitive information for its smooth functioning. Digitization of maritime transport systems has led them vulnerable to various cybersecurity attacks. Vulnerable data, such as crew or passenger personal information, vessel location, route, schedule and other information can be obtained by the attackers and misused. To counter this, a novel lightweight authentication protocol has been put forward with the help of the drone technology using the 5th generation mobile network (5G) communication. The proposed scheme is analyzed to show its robustness against various security attacks, while consuming low communication and computation costs and achieving security and functionality requirements of anonymity and untraceability properties. A detailed simulation study using the network simulator (NS3) shows its impact on various network performance parameters.