Securing continuum computing networks: towards robust encryption protocols for saving digital transformation procedures

Today, digital transformation has become critical to any organisation's data analytics. By integrating cloud computing as a data warehouse and the internet of things (IoT) as a data aggregator, digital transformation can be easily accomplished. However, data communication remains vulnerable to cyberattacks due to use of the internet. This study presents the derivative security algorithm (DVSA), a lightweight cryptographic solution that integrates cloud and edge computing. DVSA enhances the efficiency of IoT communications through mathematical transformations and derivative-based encryption. When evaluated against traditional and modern methods such as RSA, AES, and others, DVSA reduces transmission time by 85%-90% compared to RSA, outperforms AES by 20%-30% in speed, and excels at handling large files. It also offers strong security, low resource consumption, and flexible key management, making it ideal for secure and efficient IoT deployments.