Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) – Current Security Issues in an Emerging Industrial Sensor Networks

The scope of demands for Industrial Internet (II) is changing due to advances in sensor technologies and the associated incidences of security breaches. Long Term Evolution (LTE) and Fifth-Generation (5G) is the essential wireless technologies predicted to bring about the fourth industrial revolution (Industrial 4.0) through machine-to-machine and human-to-machine interconnections. The existing LTE wireless infrastructure and the new 5G wireless infrastructure are currently being optimized and developed respectively to support Low Power
Wide Area Network (LPWAN) protocols. Narrowband Internet of Things (IIoT) is an evolving licensed LPWAN protocol that is widely investigated because of the massive business opportunities that it brings. It is part of the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 13 standard introduced to meet the rising demand for low-cost connectivity in many fields. Release 13 has the potential to aid autonomous services such as asset telecontrol and monitoring.
Recent studies have highlighted the importance of LPWAN as a relevant technology for IoT deployment. Research addressing issues of security overhead, bandwidth utilization and connectivity remains a topical research area and in demand by both the cellular service providers and chipset manufacturers. Work is in the area of extending NB-IoT coverage [1] - [2], co-existence of NB-IoT in LTE environment [3] - [4], NB-IoT design and specifications [5]- [6] and applications [7] - [8] - [9].
To assess the impact of security overhead in the different operational scenarios of NB-IoT deployment modes, a design and implementation approach is used to integrate an Amarisoft software-based Lime SDR LMS7002M which provide a cellular base station for LTE/NB-IoT wireless communication standard and Pycom Fipy module serving as the sensor nodes. This paper provides a generic security requirement for NB-IoT deployment.
The findings provide early insight and understand into what standard security requirements are for NB-IoT deployment and identifies the implications of signaling security provisioning.
The study will provides data set of security monitoring and analytics, which would be used to reveal new and existing security vulnerabilities and evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed solution. The practical implication of this study is that a better understanding of security requirements for IoT deployment would enable more general deployment, increasing the demand for connectivity and giving increased business output. The findings of this study are very important
to the IoT device manufacturers, service providers and service users and would serve as a key decision indicator for NB-IoT deployment.