A survey on low-cost development boards for applying cryptography in IoT systems

The accelerated growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) around the world is noticeable in applications such as smart homes or smart health. The main manufacturers of electronic devices are offering alternatives for the easy implementation of IoT projects by using low-cost development boards with advanced performance and information security features. The importance of maintaining privacy in data exchange has been considered by these manufacturers have added dedicated cryptographic modules that are compatible with the main cryptographic algorithms. The most significant problem with these modules is that albeit the use of cryptographic algorithms, there are information security weaknesses in hardware implementations to be considered. The purpose of this survey is to theoretically compare the characteristics of the development boards currently used for cryptographic applications in IoT systems. From a rigorous selection, seven of thirty-one possible development boards for IoT were selected and compared under two fundamental requirements: low-cost and cryptographic security mechanism offered. As a consequence of the study performed and the development boards analyzed in this work, it was possible to generate a guide for the selection of secure development boards for IoT applications.