With the rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT), ensuring secure communication and authentication is becoming increasingly important. Traditional public/private key systems, although secure, are too resource-intensive. This paper introduces a lightweight mutual authentication protocol tailored for IoT environments. The model ensures essential security properties like, mutual authentication, user anonymity, and the confidentiality of long-term keys. It uses simple techniques like symmetric keys, hash functions, and XOR operations. This approach minimizes computational and communication overhead, making it ideal for resource-constrained IoT devices. Security tests verify the model’s robust authentication and resilience to various common attacks. Performance evaluations with Mininet network simulations demonstrate reduced communication and storage costs. The proposed system effectively balances security and resource-efficiency, making it well-suited for IoT networks.