LoRa Alliance Security White Paper

The main objective of LoRaWAN, being an LPWAN technology, is obviously to provide IoT connectivity… BUT – because there is always a “but” – we are now all aware that unless IoT connectivity is fully secured, it can create more problems than it solves… Who would want to connect their smoke alarm to the Internet when hackers could easily mess with it?

If your neighbor’s kid can wake you up to a deafening alarm sound at 4am, you are sure to regret you ever connected that thing to the Internet.That is why security has been a top priority of the LoRa Alliance members and part of the specification for LoRaWAN from the very beginning. 

Even though wireless security standards and implementations have gone a long way through the industry experience built around WiFi and 3G development, LPWAN presents a very fresh and unique set of requirements.

Constraints on the frame size, amount of traffic, as well as uplink and downlink asymmetry due to ISM regulations and battery preservation are so unprecedented, none of the state-of-art wireless security solutions work out-of-the-box on LPWAN technologies.

And that is why a lot of technology design cycles go into security aspects. 

Also noteworthy is that a typical LPWAN design has a tradeoff between two dimensions: security and efficiency. Efficiency is essential for LPWAN by definition,so it is not something that can be easily given up.

Some design decisions can be easily tracked back to this tradeoff;and some not, for which we owe the community a rationale whitepaper (promise :-))

So, it is not surprising that at Actility, we do care a lot about security. We have been part of the original LoRaWAN specification design, currently chairing the Security WG in the LoRa Alliance, and proudly presenting a full LoRaWAN security product portfolio including Join Server, Secure Elements, and HSM through our in-house development and partners.

For more about LoRaWAN security, please read the LoRa Alliance white paper and the FAQ on this subject that we have co-authored with our fellow members in the Alliance.