AIS Meets IoT: A Network Security Mechanism of Sustainable Marine Resource Based on Edge Computing

The sustainable utilization of marine resources is a vital issue to enrich marine life and to prevent species extinction caused by overfishing. Nowadays, it is common that commercial and smaller vessels are equipped with an Automatic Identification System (AIS) and GPS for better vessel tracking to avoid vessel collision as well as mayday calls. Additionally, governments can monitor vessels’ sea activities through AIS messages, stopping them from overfishing or tracking if any vessel has caused marine pollution. However, because AIS devices cannot guarantee data security, they are susceptible to malicious attacks such as message modification or an illegitimate identity faking a distress signal that causes other vessels to change their course. Given the above, a comprehensive network security system of a sustainable marine environment should be proposed to ensure secure communication. In this paper, a stationary IoT-enabled (Internet of Things) vessel tracking system of a sustainable marine environment is proposed. The system combines network security, edge computing, and tracking management. It offers the following functions: (1) The IoT-based vessel tracking system tracks each aquafarmer’s farming zone and issues periodic warning to prevent vessel collision for pursuing a sustainable marine environment; (2) the system can serve as a relay station that evaluates whether a vessel’s AIS data is correct; (3) the system detects abnormal behavior and any irregular information to law enforcement; (4) the system’s network security mechanism adopts a group key approach to ensure secure communication between vessels; and (5) the proposed edge computing mechanism enables the tracking system to perform message authentication and analysis, and to reduce computational burden for the remote or cloud server. Experiment results indicate that our proposed system is feasible, secure, and sustainable for the marine environment, and the tendered network security mechanism can reduce the computational burden while still ensuring security.