Edge-Computing Paradigm: Survey and Analysis on Security Threats

Introduction

The commencement of extensive applications of IoT devices in the world of information technology are generating massive amount of data. The deployment of various IoT devices/sensors within the complex interconnected networks give rise to raw data from sensors, processed and controlled data, decision making data providing intelligent solution etc. IoT provide a common platform (called IoT cloud) for all the networks and devices connected to those networks so that the analytics can be performed on data and valuable information can be extracted. Huge data traffic generated by IoT sensors and related processing pose an overwhelming load and cost on IoT cloud related to bandwidth, latency and resource scarcity. This in turn degrades the quality of service (QoS) and network performance. To cope with such issues, Edge Computing (EC) paradigms came into existence extending the cloud storage capacity and computational resources in near proximity to specific IoT devices. Although EC assisted IoT reduce the volume of data transition over cloud but continued with major risks associated with the security and privacy.

Moreover, the expansion of service requirement triggers the security and efficiency issues.

The need for offloading data to nearby edge nodes demands sufficient storage, lower transmission rates, and cost-effective computation. To fulfill all these services, edge
nodes are equipped with varied enabling technologies like wireless sensor networking, lightweight virtualization, and task offloading from the cloud to the
edge. All these factors contribute to lay the foundation for security threats.

This white paper intends to address:
1) Edge Architecture,
2) Edge security threats and various problems/challenges in edge computing and
3) Approaches for alleviating those issues.

Keywords-Edge Computing, Internet of Things, Cloud, IoT devices, edge devices, security threats, benefits, challenges.