Fortified-Edge: Secure PUF-Based Authentication Mechanism for Integrated Cybersecurity in Collaborative Edge Computing

Abstract In the current era of collaborative edge computing (CEC), secure and efficient authentication mechanisms are essential for data integrity and privacy across distributed edge data centers (EDCs). This paper proposes a novel PUF-based (Physically Unclonable Functions) authentication framework that leverages homomorphic encryption (HE) to enable secure, lightweight, and scalable authentication. By integrating HE with PUF mechanism the proposed scheme ensures that sensitive authentication data remains encrypted throughout computation and communication, allowing the system to perform verification without direct access to the plaintext PUF responses. The proposed framework is designed to handle the collaborative and dynamic nature of edge networks, supporting real-time authentication in multi-edge scenarios while maintaining low latency and computational efficiency. Experimental results demonstrate that our system achieves high resistance to common attacks, such as eavesdropping, replay, and machine learning-based attacks while adhering to the low-latency requirements of edge networks. The algorithm is verified for safety using the AVISPA SPAN tool and the total time taken for enrollment and authentication is estimated as 5.6s and the average storage size for the encrypted keys are 96 bytes.