IoT protection through device to cloud synchronization

This paper addresses the problem of protecting distributed IoT units from network based attacks while still having a high level of availability. In particular we suggest a novel method where the IoT device execution state is modeled with a suitable high level application model and where the execution state of the application of the IoT device is 'mirrored' in a cloud executed machine. This machine has very high availability and high attack resistance. The IoT device will only communicate with the mirror machine in the cloud using a dedicated synchronization protocol. All essential IoT state information and state manipulations are communicated through this synchronization protocol while all end application communication directed towards the IoT units is done towards the mirror machine in the cloud. This gives a very robust and secure system with high availability at the price of slower responses. However, for many non-real time IoT application with high security demands this performance penalty can be justified.