With the globalization of semiconductor manufacturing, the widespread production of integrated circuits (ICs) and the unauthorized usage of intellectual properties (IPs) can severely jeopardize the integrity of the semiconductor supply chain. In response to these challenges, logic locking has emerged as a critical design for trust (DfTr) strategy, ensuring that ICs attain full functionality exclusively through unlocking with an on-chip secret key. This research paper explores the implementation of lightweight logic locking to enhance the security of Internet of things (IoT) hardware IP/ICs. By integrating the logic locking technique, a confidential on-chip hardware key is integrated into the design, enabling secure encryption and decryption processes. The incorporation of GIFT with LightLock leads to a moderate increase in the total area ranging from 0.34 to 0.43% with 3.4% in combinational area and a corresponding overhead in leaf cell count from 18.05 to 23.98%. However, this increase in resource utilization is counterbalanced by a reduction in total dynamic power, which ranges from 1.02 to 12.71%. The experimental evaluation of the proposed scheme applied to the GIFT cipher for image encryption reveals that accurate encryption and decryption are achievable only with the correct on-chip hardware key.