Hierarchical Security Paradigm for IoT Multiaccess Edge Computing

The rise in embedded and IoT device usage comes with an increase in LTE usage as well. About 70% of an estimated 18 billion IoT devices will be using cellular LTE networks for efficient connections. This introduces several challenges, such as security, latency, scalability, and quality of service, for which reason edge computing or fog computing has been introduced. The edge is capable of offloading resources to the edge to reduce workload at the cloud. Several security challenges come with multiaccess edge computing (MEC), such as location-based attacks, the man- in-the-middle attacks, and sniffing. This article proposes a software-defined perimeter (SDP) framework to supplement MEC and provide added security. The SDP is capable of protecting the cloud from the edge by only authorizing authenticated users at the edge to access services in the cloud. The SDP is implemented within a mobile-edge LTE network. Delay analysis of the implementation is performed, followed by a Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack to demonstrate the resilience of the proposed SDP. Further analyses, such as CPU usage and port scanning were performed to verify the efficiency of the proposed SDP. This analysis is followed by concluding remarks with insight into the future of the SDP in MEC.