Key Agreement and Authentication Protocols in the Internet of Things: A Survey

The rapid development of Internet of things (IoT) technology has made the IoT applicable in many areas of life and has contributed to the IoT’s improvement. IoT devices are equipped with various sensors that enable them to perform the tasks they were designed for. The use of such devices is associated with securing communication between devices and users. The key stages of communication are the processes of authentication and the process of agreeing on session keys because they are the basis of the subsequent communication phases. The specially designed security protocols are used to secure communication. These protocols define the course of communication and cryptographic techniques employed for securing. In this article, we have reviewed the latest communication protocols designed to secure authentication processes and agree on session keys in IoT environments. We analyzed the proposed protocols’ security level, vulnerability, and computational and communication costs. We showed our observations, describing the requirements that a secure protocol should meet.