Fog Computing for the Internet of Things: Security and Privacy Issues

The inherent characteristics of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as limited storage and computational power, require a new platform to efficiently process data. The concept of fog computing has been introduced as a technology to bridge the gap between remote data centers and IoT devices. Fog computing enables a wide range of benefits, including enhanced security, decreased bandwidth, and reduced latency. These benefits make the fog an appropriate paradigm for many IoT services in various applications such as connected vehicles and smart grids. Nevertheless, fog devices (located at the edge of the Internet) obviously face many security and privacy threats, much the same as those faced by traditional data centers. In this article, the authors discuss the security and privacy issues in IoT environments and propose a mechanism that employs fog to improve the distribution of certificate revocation information among IoT devices for security enhancement. They also present potential research directions aimed at using fog computing to enhance the security and privacy issues in IoT environments.