Systems and methods are provided for detecting and mitigating a sleep deprivation attack (SDA). A method for detection of the SDA includes one of tracking power consumption rate of a device, incoming request signals received by the device, or an activity duration of one or more physical interfaces of the device. A system for mitigation of the SDA includes the device to be protected from the SDA, a counter to count request signals received by the device from another device, a counter attack circuit to pose one or more security challenges by sending a request message to the other device once a counted number of request signals exceeds a pre-determined number, and a control circuit to terminate connection with the other device if an expected reply based on the request message is not received from the other device within a pre-determined time duration.