The Internet of Things (IoT) has gained remarkable acceptance from millions of individuals. This is evident in the extensive use of intelligent devices such as smartphones, smart television, speakers, air conditioning, lighting, and high�speed networks. The general application area of IoT includes industries, hospitals, schools, homes, sports, oil and gas, automobile, and entertainment, to mention a few. However, because of the unbounded connection of IoT devices and the lack of a specific method for overseeing communication, security concerns such as distributed denial of service (DDoS), denial of service (DoS), replay, botnet, social engineering, man�in�the�middle, and brute force attacks have posed enormous challenges in the IoT environment. Regarding these enormous challenges, this study focuses on DDoS and DoS attacks. These two attacks have the most severe consequences in the IoT environment. The solution proposed in this study can also help future researchers tackle the expansion of IoT security threats. Moreover, the study conducts rigorous experiments to assess the efficiency of the proposed approach. In summary, the experimental results show that the proposed hybrid approach mitigates data exfiltration caused by DDoS and DoS attacks by 95.4, with average network lifetime, energy consumption, and throughput improvements of 15, 25, and 60, respectively. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.