The exponential growth in the number of Internet of Things (IoT)
devices and applications in recent years can be attributed partly to
the emergence of several new IoT startup companies and potential
applications. While many of these startups offer significant innovations in the IoT, some of them lack security expertise, resulting
in the development of ill-equipped IoT devices and applications in
terms of security. For example, one of the fundamental problems
faced by non-security experts in the IoT space is how to select the
right Lightweight Cryptographic Algorithm (LWCA) for a given
security requirement. To address this specific problem, an IoT Hardware Platform Security Advisor (IoT-HarPSecA) framework is proposed in this paper. The security framework is aimed at facilitating
the choice of specific security algorithms given a set of security
goals, hardware specifications, message payload size, application
area, and energy requirement. Within the scope of this framework,
we develop an easy-to-use tool in C++ that allows users to interact
with the IoT-HarPSecA framework. The tool can potentially help
non-security experts, such as electronics and computer engineers as
well as application developers make informed decisions on selecting
the appropriate security algorithms for their various applications.
Finally, the paper presents some preliminary results and discussion.