A Comparative Framework for IoT Cyber-Attack Mitigation Strategies During the COVID-19 Era: A Deep Analysis of Vulnerabilities, Countermeasures, and Real-World Applicability

Abstract

The COVID-19 epidemic expedited worldwide dependence on Internet of Things (IoT) technology in healthcare, education, enterprise systems, and public services, which resulted in rapid deployment of unscheduled technology solutions. The exceptional growth of IoT devices generated serious security threats that originated from multiple device environments, poor basic security settings, limited device processing capacity, and unprotected residential Wi-Fi connections. IoT systems experienced a drastic rise in cyber threats which included phishing attacks, ransomware attacks, DDoS attacks, spoofing attacks, and unauthorized access attempts. The current research provides taxonomies and systematic evaluations, but there needs to be more structured studies that compare different mitigation methods for emergency operational settings. This paper establishes a multi-criteria comparative framework to evaluate IoT cyber-attack mitigation solutions which assess effectiveness and scalability and resource overhead and crisis feasibility and cross-sector applicability. The paper uses SLR-based thesis dataset insights and pandemic-era case scenarios to evaluate VPNs and MFA and secure routing protocols and ML-based intrusion detection and blockchain authentication and encryption techniques and human-centric controls. The research results show that secure routing and VPN and MFA network-layer methods provide the strongest security protection, while resource-constrained IoT devices should use lightweight encryption together with secure protocols. Blockchain and machine learning methods can provide strong security solutions, yet they face difficulties when used in emergency situations. The recommended comparison framework provides politicians and healthcare professionals and organizations and IoT platform developers with effective guidance to choose appropriate mitigation solutions through their analysis of current and upcoming crisis situations.