Securing Self-organizing IoT Ecosystem: A Distributed Ledger Technology Approach

Abstract

The proliferation of the Internet of Things has seen it adopted to practically all aspects of life. There has been an increase in demand for more IoT devices which are manufactured by several companies. This has however left need to address vulnerabilities within and threats to these devices. In many cases, these vulnerabilities arise from manufacturer focus on functionality rather than security. Secure by design IoT devices are rare in the market today. Efforts to address this are being made by the IoT research community, however, more effort is required. Deficiencies of current efforts include accountability of devices and privacy of data generated across the IoT landscape. The aim of this Ph.D. research is to improve the security, privacy, veracity, and trust. The approach developed in this study will be based on non-repudiation of actions among self-organized IoT devices in an IoT Ecosystem by leveraging Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). A proposed system architecture which relies on the Distributed Ledger Technology and its related features will enable services to be applied to the IoT landscape to achieve aspects of end to end IoT security. The initial progress to date is presented within this manuscript.