REVIEW OF AUTHENTICATION AND SECURITY FRAMEWORKS FOR THE INTERNET OF THINGS (IOT)

The Internet of Things (IoT) is transforming the modern digital landscape by enabling seamless connectivity among billions of devices. However, the rapid growth of IoT networks has introduced critical security challenges, particularly in authentication, due to the heterogeneous, distributed, and resource-constrained nature of IoT environments. This review explores the evolving landscape of authentication mechanisms in IoT, highlighting their significance in mitigating common threats such as impersonation, replay, and man-in-the-middle attacks. The paper presents a comparative study of existing authentication approaches, including identity-based, token-based, PUF-based, and context-aware methods, assessing them on parameters like security robustness, computational overhead, and hardware compatibility. Through a comprehensive literature review, we identify current limitations in traditional models and propose potential enhancements aimed at developing lightweight, scalable, and energy-efficient authentication frameworks. This study contributes to the ongoing discourse on IoT security by outlining future research directions to achieve secure, reliable, and context-aware authentication mechanisms suitable for the dynamic IoT ecosystem.