Security Solutions for IoT-Enabled Applications Against the Disease Pandemic

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Internet of Things (IoT) has rapidly taken on a powerful role to combat it with the emerging smart medicine, smart community, smart city, smart home, and so on. IoT devices are widely deployed in various places to provide feasible solutions for personnel temperature detection, medical treatment, and quarantine control during the pandemic. However, IoT-enabled applications inevitably face serious security challenges due to the massive amount of sensitive data. In this article, we first investigate several strategies of pandemic control based on IoT and the critical supporting technologies, 5G, artificial intelligence, and blockchain. Then we present the security issues in the process of data collection to usage in the applications. Through the analysis of specific paradigms, the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) and a location check-in system, we exploit the potential security challenges, including data leakage and false sensing. Countermeasures are proposed to address these issues and are effectively validated by simulation results. Finally, some open issues instead of data security threats of IoT are outlined.