A Decentralized Blockchain-based Architecture for a Secure Cloud-Enabled IoT

Abstract

The integration of cloud computing and Internet of Things (IoT) offers a promising, rich platform for data collection and analysis in smart healthcare. In such a model, IoT devices collect data about patient health status through multiple intelligent sensors, whereas cloud offers scalable resources to quickly meet workload demands. Despite these remarkable improvements, the current architectures do not sufficiently address the security needs for patient medical records. In this perspective, and bearing in mind the specific characteristics of each technology, we propose a distributed security mechanism in a way that fits with IoT and cloud constraints. Our contribution to secure cloud-enabled IoT is twofold. First, we rely on OM-AM (Objective, Model, Architecture and Mechanism) for modeling and analysing the security and privacy requirements of smart healthcare. Second, we use blockchain architecture along with Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) model as a decentralized flexible system to support access control decisions. In particular, we rely on XACML (eXtensible Access Control Markup Language) to easily build and implement robust policies required for maintaining a secure IoT-based environment. The novelty of the proposed framework lies at smartly leveraging the recent technologies to keep health information confidential. In fact, putting blockchain and IoT together would undoubtedly create a totally new solution for remote patient monitoring. The simulation results show that the proposal is an efficient way of implementing ubiquitous and cognitive tools for smart healthcare systems.