Development and Evaluation of a Novel IoT Testbed for Enhancing Security with Machine Learning-Based Threat Detection

The Internet of Things (IoT) has revolutionized industries by enabling seamless data exchange between billions of connected devices. However, the rapid proliferation of IoT devices has introduced significant security challenges, as many of these devices lack robust protection against cyber threats such as data breaches and denial-of-service attacks. Addressing these vulnerabilities is critical to maintaining the integrity and trust of IoT ecosystems. Traditional cybersecurity solutions often fail in dynamic, heterogeneous IoT environments due to device diversity, limited computational resources, and inconsistent communication protocols, which hinder the deployment of uniform and scalable security mechanisms. Moreover, there is a notable lack of realistic, high-quality datasets for training and evaluating machine learning (ML) models for IoT security, limiting their effectiveness in detecting complex and evolving threats. This paper presents the development and implementation of a novel physical smart office/home testbed designed to evaluate ML algorithms for detecting and mitigating IoT security vulnerabilities. The testbed replicates a real-world office environment, integrating a variety of IoT devices, such as different types of sensors, cameras, smart plugs, and workstations, within a network generating authentic traffic patterns. By simulating diverse attack scenarios including unauthorized access and network intrusions, the testbed provides a controlled platform to train, test, and validate ML-based anomaly detection systems. Experimental results show that the XGBoost model achieved a balanced accuracy of up to 99.977% on testbed-generated data, comparable to 99.985% on the benchmark IoT-23 dataset. Notably, the SVM model achieved up to 96.71% accuracy using our testbed data, outperforming its results on IoT-23, which peaked at 94.572%. The findings demonstrate the testbed's effectiveness in enabling realistic security evaluations and ability to generate real-world datasets, highlighting its potential as a valuable tool for advancing IoT security research. This work contributes to the development of more resilient and adaptive security frameworks, offering valuable insights for safeguarding critical IoT infrastructures against evolving threats.