Internet of Nano-Things (IoNT): A Comprehensive Review from Architecture to Security and Privacy Challenges

Throughout the course of human history, owing to innovations that shape the future of mankind, many technologies have been innovated and used towards making people’s lives easier. Such technologies have made us who we are today and are involved with every domain that is vital for human survival such as agriculture, healthcare, and transportation. The Internet of Things (IoT) is one such technology that revolutionizes almost every aspect of our lives, found early in the 21st century with the advancement of Internet and Information Communication (ICT) Technologies. As of now, the IoT is served in almost every domain, as we mentioned above, allowing the connectivity of digital objects around us to the Internet, thus allowing the remote monitoring, control, and execution of actions based on underlying conditions, making such objects smarter. Over time, the IoT has progressively evolved and paved the way towards the Internet of Nano-Things (IoNT) which is the use of nano-size miniature IoT devices. The IoNT is a relatively new technology that has lately begun to establish a name for itself, and many are not aware of it, even in academia or research. The use of the IoT always comes at a cost, owing to the connectivity to the Internet and the inherently vulnerable nature of IoT, wherein it paves the way for hackers to compromise security and privacy. This is also applicable to the IoNT, which is the advanced and miniature version of IoT, and brings disastrous consequences if such security and privacy violations were to occur as no one can notice such issues pertaining to the IoNT, due to their miniaturized nature and novelty in the field. The lack of research in the IoNT domain has motivated us to synthesize this research, highlighting architectural elements in the IoNT ecosystem and security and privacy challenges pertaining to the IoNT. In this regard, in the study, we provide a comprehensive overview of the IoNT ecosystem and security and privacy pertaining to the IoNT as a reference to future research.