Adaptive lightweight authentication (ALA): An efficient paradigm for IoT devices security
Sundas Asghar, Adnan Ahmad, Abdulazaz Ali Albalawi, Muzammil Hussain, Tariq Umer, Ahmad Arsalan, Jehangir Arshad · Engineering Science and Technology an International Journal · 2026
Adoption of the Internet of Things (IOT) brings with it a wealth of exciting opportunities, and lightweight authentication has emerged as a compelling area of research, offering a balanced approach between efficiency and security. However, it raises significant concerns, such as high resource usage and computational complexity while managing authentication security. To address these concerns, it is critical to advance sustainable industrial systems by reducing unnecessary resource usage, aligning with global efforts toward resilient infrastructure and responsible production. Classical authentication processes traditionally implemented to verify user identity, need improvement. Given the resource-constrained nature of many IOT devices which often have only 6–7 h of battery life and 2–4 GB of RAM, static authentication methods and security protocols, originally designed for more powerful systems, tend to be too resource-intensive for IOT devices, leading to inefficiencies. This creates a research gap where low-risk communication may suffer from frequent authentication overhead. In this paper, an adaptive lightweight authentication scheme has been introduced, which allows the efficient authentication of users and devices with a very low computational and energy cost. The suggested approach dynamically adapts the authentication needs depending on the sensitivity of the requested resource to provide the optimal level of both security and system efficiency. The experimental evidence, computed with a simulated model, indicates that the proposed scheme can accomplish about 43% less computational complexity and resource utilization than conventional static authentication techniques. The results shows that the suggested solution can be used to enhance energy efficiency without compromising the security management, enabling an energy-efficient solution applicable to wearables, supply chains, healthcare, the vehicle industry, and more.