Mobile Edge Computing, Fog et al.: A Survey and Analysis of Security Threats and Challenges

By Rodrigo Roman, Javier López, Masahiro Mambo. 2016

1,201 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract For various reasons, the cloud computing paradigm is unable to meet certain requirements (e.g. low latency and jitter, context awareness, mobility support) that are crucial for several applications (e.g. vehicular networks, augmented reality). To fulfill these requirements, various paradigms, such as fog computing, mobile edge computing, and mobile cloud computing, have emerged in recent years. While these edge paradigms share several features, most of the existing research is compartmentalized; no synergies have been explored. This is especially true in the field of security, where most analyses focus only on one edge paradigm, while ignoring the others. The main goal of this study is to holistically analyze the security threats, challenges, and mechanisms inherent in all edge paradigms, while highlighting potential synergies and venues of collaboration. In our results, we will show that all edge paradigms should consider the advances in other paradigms.

Subfields: Computer Networks and Communications, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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Citations in the corpus

A Survey on Mobile Crowdsensing Systems: Challenges, Solutions, and Opportunities (2019, background): “Each layer can consist of a large number of nodes with computation, communication, and storage capabilities, including routers, gateways, access points, and base stations [324].”
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A Survey on Mobile Edge Networks: Convergence of Computing, Caching and Communications (2017, background): “[24] A discussion of the security threats and challenges in the edge paradigms, as well as the promising solution for each specific challenge.”
Survey on Multi-Access Edge Computing for Internet of Things Realization (2018, background): “Typical security threats in these areas are Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks and malicious node problems [34], [143].”
Mobile Edge Computing: A Survey (2018, background): “This section studies security and privacy issues in the context of different architectural elements of MEC [13], [88]–[90].”
The Future of Healthcare Internet of Things: A Survey of Emerging Technologies (2020, background): “Fog computing can also be implemented at the base stations of mobile networks, therefore extending the scope of applications for its implementation [140].”
A Survey on Mobile Augmented Reality With 5G Mobile Edge Computing: Architectures, Applications, and Technical Aspects (2021, background): “As the MEC brings the computing and storage capabilities towards the end user [42], [128], [129], UDN and MEC are considered as two distinct but complementary technologies in 5G networks [130].”
A Survey of Multi-Access Edge Computing in 5G and Beyond: Fundamentals, Technology Integration, and State-of-the-Art (2019, neutral): “In edge computing paradigms, there are numerous security and privacy threats, for example, wireless jamming, denial of service, man-in-the-middle, spoofing attacks, privacy leakage, virtual machine manipulation, and injection of information [24], [255].”
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Anatomy of Threats to the Internet of Things (2019, background): “have distinctive features, such as decentralized infrastructure, mobility support, location awareness, and low latency [103], which make them vulnerable to various security and privacy threats [104], [105].”
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A Survey on Emerging SDN and NFV Security Mechanisms for IoT Systems (2019, background): “Indeed, accounting for the exponential increase of micro edge data centers, verification of their trustworthiness can be highly challenging [191].”