Evaluating a Blockchain-based Method for Industrial IoT Data Confidentiality: Proof of Concept
Utilizing the Internet of Things in the industry has led to an event called IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) due to make smart cities, communication routes, smart grids, etc. IIoT deals with various sensors, devices scattered on the edges, and cloud servers by identified standards and protocols in decentralized networks. Besides all benefits the IIoT has carried out, the data stream’s security and privacy remain a debatable subject of this technology. There are many solutions to overcome security issues and confidentiality breaches, but some do not completely consider the purpose. Factors like speed, integrity, security, and power consumption must be considered, and of course, the cost factor is a significant role in achieving the goal. The purpose of this article is to introduce a new scheme evolved from Blockchain methodology to overcome privacy and data confidentiality challenges.
How TBLOCK works?
When the sensor switches on, a new round of data chunks is running. Three Algorithms present phases of this scheme as following. New_Round() means each round for data absorption which here is configured for 1 minute. Coincidence with data generation, the hash value of generation time with SHA-family cryptography methods, is created, then the datagram is formed () and hash values are transferred to modules within the ledger ().
An appropriate blockchain platform for IoT and industrial IoT, for instance, the BFT-based private blockchains according to potential performance and security of data (and user) is suitable for the IoT environment. Totally, private blockchains offer more security and better performance than public blockchains which permission not involved them. In this regard, Hyperledger-Fabric use endorsement policies to define which peers need to execute TXs. In this way, a given chain code can be kept private from peers that are not part of endorsement policy
An IoT-centric consensus protocol must have the capability to sustain maximum possible faulty nodes. Moreover, the IoT systems are vulnerable to physical or cyber attacks, the most important consideration to lessen the effect of faulty nodes is to carry out integrity check of validator nodes so any dishonest node makes contribution on related process. Besides that, the issue of scalability concerning the management of ever-increasing blockchain size on IoT devices can be addressed by various blockchain architectures. For example, sidechain and treechain blockchain. As[23] states a sidechain is a decentralized p2p network which stores sensor data on an off-chain network of private nodes in the form of DHT, in this model the blockchain contains the pointers to data and not all the nodes replicate all TXs.
