Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a vast network that provides an interconnection between various objects and intelligent devices. The three important components of IoT are sensing, processing, and transmission of data. Nowadays, the new IoT technology is used in many different sectors, including the domestic, healthcare, telecommunications, environment, industry, construction, water management, and energy. IoT technology, involving the usage of embedded devices, differs from computers, laptops, and mobile devices. Due to exchanging personal data generated by sensors and the possibility of combining both real and virtual worlds, security is becoming crucial for IoT systems. Furthermore, IoT requires lightweight encryption techniques. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to identify the security challenges and key issues that are likely to arise in the IoT environment in order to guide authentication techniques to achieve a secure IoT service.

Multi-server authentication makes convenient to benefit from services of various service providers on the basis of one-time registration through a trusted third party. Since, the users are reluctant to register themselves separately from all servers due to the hassle of remembering many passwords and other cost constraints. The multi-server authentication enables the immediate provision of services by the real-time verification of users on an insecure channel. The literature for multi-server oriented authenticated key agreement could be traced Information Technology and Control 2018/3/47 432 back to Li et al. and Lee et al., in 2000.Since then, numerous multi-server authentication techniques have been put forth. Nonetheless, the research academia looks for more secure and efficient authentication protocols. Recently, Chen and Lee's scheme presented a two-factor multi-server key agreement protocol, which is found to be prone to impersonation, stolen smart card, key-compromise impersonation attack, and trace attacks. Besides, the scheme is also found to have the inefficient password modification procedure. We propose an improved protocol that counters the above limitations in almost an equivalent computation cost. Moreover, our protocol is supplemented with formal security analysis using BAN logic along with performance analysis and evaluation.

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Urban ecosystem services (UES) are indispensable for life. Stakeholders are improvising strategies for a more sustainable provisioning of UES. For this purpose and for identifying orientations towards geospatial data in UES studies, the “bibliometric analysis” technique was deployed. The inclinations facilitate assessments pertaining to spatio-temporal oscillations in the supply–demand equilibrium. The propensities are gaining recognition due to time and cost effectiveness. Besides this, Remote Sensing (RS) in conjunction with Geographic Information System (GIS), enables the conduct of synoptic and robust periodic evaluations. The study analyzes inclinations towards RS in contemporary research (2010–2020) focusing, particularly, on urban ecosystem services. It specifically focuses on methodological frameworks and major sources of remotely sensed data. Therefore, a total of 261 records of research articles were identified and retrieved. Subsequently, 79 articles were selected for further processing and content analysis. It transpired that approximately 30% of the selected publications deployed remotely sensed data for assessment purposes. The majority (96%) of such studies were conducted in economically developed and industrialized countries. However, the researchers from both developed and developing countries prefer open software and free data sources. Besides this, they prefer satellite-based optical sensors over image sensors such as TIR, SAR, or light sensors for acquiring data. The findings formulate that Land Use Land Cover (LULC)-based methodologies and inclinations for assessing regulating services are more frequently pursued. The findings revealed that enhanced research collaborations, access to data, and assessment gadgets are obligatory for capacity building in developing regions. Knowledge sharing and cost-effective access to RS and GIS based platforms are incumbent for ensuring urban environmental sustainability in developing economies.

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