Smart-Contract Enabled Decentralized Identity Management Framework for Industry 4.0

Abstract

Industry 4.0 heavily uses connected machine paradigm to automate, track and maintain processes. However, a major challenge in Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT) remains managing the burgeoning number of sensors. The centralized framework for managing these devices is raising concerns. In this work, we propose a novel proof-of-concept framework for managing identity and access management policies for IIoT. The new framework is a smart contract enabled and blockchain based decentralized life-cycle and access management system. It is backed by decentralized storage technology InterPlanatery FileSystem (IPFS). Our framework is decentralized and scalable unlike the state-of-the-art IIoT management frameworks designed for clouds which are centralized.