Security Mechanisms and Challenges in Wireless Sensor Networks

With the emerging trends in technology that are aimed at making the world a global village, various moves have been made to bridge communication gaps as well as simplify overly complex tasks. Among those innovations, the introduction of Wireless Sensor Networks has been welcome from all quarters based on the many advantages it brings forth (Perrig, Stankovic & Wagner, 2004). This paper explores Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) as an emerging technology with immense capacity to completely transform daily experiences, ranging from risky military environments, traffic control, surveillance to accident detection just to name a few. For the WSNs to achieve their intended goals, it is necessary that security is prioritized to reduce the risk of compromise, looking at the intricate roles the technology plays, for instance military applications (Gungor, Lu & Hancke, 2010). Furthermore by considering the nature of WSNs operations, which revolves around detecting very intense threats, false alarms would negate the essence of embracing the WSN oriented systems. In a nutshell, the sensing technology bears many futuristic oriented ideas, if well explored will make life easier for generations to come (Romer & Mattern, 2004). Addressing the current and potential challenges guarantees that this crucial WSN technology is taken as seriously as should. The purpose of this paper is to explicate the security mechanisms and challenges in Wireless Sensor Networks, scoring on the threats as well as proposed solutions for the WSN related drawbacks. This is achieved by embracing a holistic approach as presented herein.