Sustainability is one of the main concerns of decision makers, factories, and retailers. This importance increases when the organization needs to define, implement, and manage a sustainable portfolio to succeed in today’s environment of change and uncertainty. Therefore, this study examines the portfolio of palm producers from 2010 to 2020. The proposed optimization model is based on the classic mean‐variance approach and companies ranked using the PROMETHEE method. Our findings indicate that the effects of this asset allocation change in favour of high‐score sustainability investments significantly influence risk‐adjusted returns of portfolios. According to the finding, sustainable portfolios perform better than conventional ones. The findings could be useful to private and institutional investors and fund managers in constructing and managing their portfolios. The efficient frontier of the best 50% portfolio shows a higher risk for a higher return. This could explain that a higher sustainability score in different criteria leads to more optimal portfolios in terms of risk and return. Intended contributions include considering sustainability, minimizing risk, and portfolio management simultaneously.

Today, the Internet of Things can be described as the fastest-growing network that offers applications in a wide range of applications. This breadth has led to a wide range of IoT research. Applications of this network can be mentioned in various sectors such as e-health, smart homes, smart cities, and everything in smart cities via the Internet, where the collection and exchange of large amounts of data is undeniable. The IoT also supports large-scale low-power networks (LLNs) and uses the RPL protocol to route low-power, low-resource nodes on this large scale. Due to the exchange of sensitive data in this network, security is a critical issue. However, RPLs have many serious vulnerabilities, including the use of symmetric encryption that attackers can exploit. In addition, the privacy and security of network nodes are other challenges of this network. Therefore, there is a significant need for an effective and secure authentication scheme that enables IoT users to authenticate each other and share the session key to a secure meeting. In this paper, we aim to provide a secure protocol to enhance the security of the RPL protocol against a variety of network attacks. For this purpose, a key agreement protocol and authentication mechanism using ECC theory are proposed. Finally, we show that the proposed scheme is secure against routine network attacks and incurs a small computational and communication cost that is compatible with nodes with limited resources.

In today’s advanced network and digital age, the Internet of Things network is experiencing a significant growing trend and, due to its wide range of services and network coverage, has been able to take a special place in today’s technology era. Among the applications that can be mentioned for this network are the field of electronic health, smart residential complexes, and a wide level of connections that have connected the inner-city infrastructure in a complex way to make it smart. The notable and critical issue that exists in this network is the extent of the elements that make up the network and, due to this, the strong and massive data exchanges at the network level. With the increasing deployment of the Internet of Things, a wide range of challenges arise, especially in the discussion of establishing network security. Regarding security concerns, ensuring the confidentiality of the data being exchanged in the network, maintaining the privacy of the network nodes, protecting the identity of the network nodes, and finally implementing the security policies required to deal with a wide range of network cyber threats are of great importance. A fundamental element in the security of IoT networks is the authentication process, wherein nodes are required to validate each other’s identities to ensure the establishment of secure communication channels. Through the enforcement of security prerequisites, in this study, we suggested a security protocol focused on reinforcing security characteristics and safeguarding IoT nodes. By utilizing the security features provided by Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and employing the Elliptic Curve Diffie–Hellman (ECDH) key-exchange mechanism, we designed a protocol for authenticating nodes and establishing encryption keys for every communication session within the Internet of Things. To substantiate the effectiveness and resilience of our proposed protocol in withstanding attacks and network vulnerabilities, we conducted evaluations utilizing both formal and informal means. Furthermore, our results demonstrate that the protocol is characterized by low computational and communication demands, which makes it especially well-suited for IoT nodes operating under resource constraints.

The smart electricity distribution network, known as Smart Grid (SG), represents an optimal and intelligent framework for electricity generation and distribution, facilitated through a bidirectional information and communication network. However, setting up such an expansive network presents considerable network security challenges. Consequently, numerous threats such as impersonation attacks, repeat attacks, and man-in-the-middle attacks can pose the network with substantial difficulties. To address security and privacy concerns in SG, researchers have proposed several security protocols intending to increase protection, but exchanging information in a public channel that does not have security conditions poses serious security risks. Despite numerous security protocols having been suggested to facilitate the authentication of network entities and the generation of session keys for ensuring secure communication, some of them have security flaws or high computational overhead that makes them unsuitable for resource-constrained components. This paper presents a lightweight protocol to address the security challenges in smart grid networks. The proposed scheme incorporates a multi-level authentication mechanism and the Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) technique to ensure the secure generation of session keys. The security of the proposed protocol has been formally verified using the AVISPA simulation tool and further validated through informal analysis against various attacks. Performance evaluation results demonstrate that the protocol is computationally efficient and well-suited to the resource-constrained environment of smart grid entities. Specifically, the session key generation process is more efficient compared to several existing approaches, thereby minimizing communication delays and enhancing the overall operational performance of the system.