Securing instrumented environments over content-centric networking: the case of lighting control and NDN

Abstract

Instrumented environments, such as modern building automation systems (BAS), are becoming commonplace and are increasingly interconnected with (and sometimes by) enterprise networks and the Internet. Regardless of the underlying communication platform, secure control of devices in such environments is a challenging task. The current trend is to move from proprietary communication media and protocols to IP over Ethernet. While the move towards IP represents progress, new and different Internet architectures might be better-suited for instrumented environments. In this paper, we consider security of instrumented environments in the context of Content-Centric Networking (CCN). In particular, we focus on building automation over Named-Data Networking (NDN), a prominent instance of CCN. After identifying security requirements in a specific BAS sub-domain (lighting control), we construct a concrete NDN-based security architecture, analyze its properties and report on preliminary implementation and experimental results. We believe that this work represents a useful exercise in assessing the utility of NDN in securing a communication paradigm well outside of its claimed forte of content distribution. At the same time, we provide a viable (secure and efficient) communication platform for a class of instrumented environments exemplified by lighting control.