## 1 Introduction  
With the ongoing advancement of embedded systems and semiconductor technology, new devices are getting smaller and faster and consuming less power. This has led to the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) [1], whereby many \"things\" in our real lives are connected to the internet and to each other. These current technologies are stimulating the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0), in which industries have started to embrace the IoT in their industrial operations, forming the so-called Industrial IoT (IIoT). These things enhance the automation of operations in the industry by utilizing hardware and mechanical components to interact with the physical world, making them vulnerable to threats and cyber-attacks. They are usually deployed in critical infrastructures where attacks may lead to damage and casualties. Attackers might steal confidential data, slow production operations, or even interrupt and stop entire operations, as happened with the Stuxnet attack [2]. Therefore, securing IIoT edge devices is a high priority and should be taken seriously, starting from the design phase. Cryptographic primitives are often used to fortify embedded system devices during transmission and communication by ensuring the confidentiality and integrity of data, as well as guaranteeing access control, authentication, and non-repudiation [3]. Researchers have developed security protocolsin computer networks and other embedded systems based on proven symmetric and asymmetric cryptographic frameworks [4]. However, IIoCT edge devices normally have limited resources and power and do not have the computing resources required to handle conventional cryptographic algorithms. Their limited capabilities necessitate the need for lightweight and compact cryptographic schemes [5; 6]. The field of lightweight cryptography (LWC) investigates the integration of cryptographic primitives into constrained devices [7]. LWC balances the tradeoffs of cost, energy consumption, performance, and security [7; 8] to provide lightweight ciphers that consume low amounts of power and achieve an acceptable level of security. Researchers have also proposed lightweight crypto engines by reducing the complexity of the conventional algorithms, but these have the drawback of reduced security [9]. For devices with limited capabilities, energy-efficient algorithms that perform well in hardware are much more appropriate [10]. A reduction in hardware chips (Gate Equivalents--GE) is imperative in LWC as it is directly proportional to the cost and the power consumption. Cryptography can be asymmetric (public key) or symmetric (secret key). The latter guarantees data confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity by utilizing an authentication protocol. For LWC, block ciphers are the most widely used for encryption (confidentiality) as the data can be processed in blocks rather than bit streaming. For data integrity and authenticity, hash functions are commonly used by forming message authentication codes (MACs). They take a plain message as the input and produce a fixed-length tag. For more advanced functionality, ciphers and integrity mechanisms are integrated to form authenticated encryption (AE). Lightweight edge devices such as the Internet of Things (IoT) have been widely used in recent years either for monitoring or controlling. The incremental usage of these devices raises concerns regarding the security of the data passing through these devices. Cryptographers and cryptanalysts encounter major challenges due to the rapid spread of lightweight devices, needing to safeguard their data where these devices are installed in different critical environments. These devices usually have resource constraints. Therefore, lightweight cryptographic primitives must be integrated with these devices to ensure their security and authenticity. Lightweight block ciphers are cryptographic primitives that utilize small design spaces and Gate Equivalents (GE). The literature defines \"lightweight\" as ciphers utilizing less than 3000 GE [10].