Off-Chain Trusted Computing

Abstract

This column delves into privacy risks of the IoT using risk concepts that are more native to the security domain in order to conceptually bridge our collective understanding, articulation, and management of privacy concerns in the IoT which otherwise might not be sufficiently considered or foreseen by existing legal and technical controls. Trustworthiness and privacy are of primary concern as companies connect their manufacturing and logistic infrastructures to the Internet of Things (IoT). They want to reap the benefit of automated asset management, process control and predictive maintenance. However, to do so effectively, companies need to facilitate information sharing among trustworthy partners while complying with data protection and privacy preserving regulations. In this respect, Distributed Ledgers (a.k.a. Blockchains) offer a viable solution by enabling their participants to discover one another and establish peer-to-peer trust relations without a centralized intermediary.