A Survey on Security Requirements for WSNs: Focusing on the Characteristics Related to Security

Abstract

As WSNs combine with a diversity of next-generation technologies, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have gained considerable attention as a promising ubiquitous technology. Even though several studies on WSNs are being undertaken, few systematically analyze the security issues relating to them. Moreover, recent systems tend to be implemented without sufficient consideration about owns security requirements, which can lead to lethal threats. Systems that do not consider security requirements may provide attackers the opportunity to reduce the overall efficiency and performance of the system. This means that inadequately applied security requirements can result in defective security of systems. Therefore, in this study, we emphasized the importance of security requirements to raise awareness regarding them. In addition, we analyzed literature that could be improved by including WSNs security requirements such as characteristics, constraints, and threats. Furthermore, we adopted a systematic methodology by referring to reliable literature and performed a different analysis from previous studies. We derived and mapped the different security factors based on the literature and illustrated the relationships of each security factor. Finally, our research compared with studies of a similar type to evaluate whether it provided a significant contribution. In other words, in this study, we analyzed various factors related to WSNs security based on reviewing the literature and show our contribution, such as a systematic analysis framework and factor mapping compared with traditional studies. Though there are some considerations, we expect that this research derived the essential security requirements in any WSNs environments.

Keywords

• Wireless sensor network
• security requirement
• next-generation technologies