RFID and the Internet of Things: Technology, Applications, and Security Challenges

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has started to exert a major influence on modern supply chain management. In manufacturing, RFID changes the way objects are tracked on the shop floor and how manufactured goods interact with the production environment. In logistics, RFID is used to track and trace pallets or individual objects on a global scale. In retail, RFID is used to identify objects, retrieve related information, and prevent theft. Sometimes the tags remain attached to the objects post-sale, thus facilitating additional services. Overall, enterprises have much more detailed information about the objects: the use and produce, their location, their trajectories, and their physical state.

In this survey paper, we show how RFID has transformed the supply chain over the past decade, discussing manufacturing, logistics, and retail and related cost/benefit considerations. We also describe the vision of an "Internet of Things," where each participating object has a digital shadow with related information stored in cyberspace. We conclude with an extensive discussion of related privacy and security risks, including some of our own proposals to mitigate them.