Hany F. Atlam, Robert John Walters, Gary Wills, Joshua Daniel
Abstract The Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming the future of the Internet with a large number of connected devices that are predicted to reach about 50 billion by 2020. With proliferation of IoT devices and need to increase information sharing in IoT applications, risk-based access control model has become the best candidate for both academic and commercial organizations to address access control issues. This model carries out a security risk analysis on the access request by using IoT contextual information to provide access decisions dynamically. This model solves challenges related to flexibility and scalability of the IoT system. Therefore, we propose an adaptive risk-based access control model for the IoT. This model uses real-time contextual information associated with the requesting user to calculate the security risk regarding each access request. It uses user attributes while making the access request, action severity, resource sensitivity and user risk history as inputs to analyze and calculate the risk value to determine the access decision. To detect abnormal and malicious actions, smart contracts are used to track and monitor user activities during the access session to detect and prevent potential security violations. In addition, as the risk estimation process is the essential stage to build a risk-based model, this paper provides a discussion of common risk estimation methods and then proposes the fuzzy inference system with expert judgment as to be the optimal approach to handle risk estimation process of the proposed risk-based model in the IoT system.
Blockchain, which is a technology for distributedly managing ledger information over multiple nodes without a centralized system, has elicited increasing attention. Performing experiments on actual blockchains is difficult because a large number of nodes in wide areas are necessary. In this study, we developed a blockchain network simulator SimBlock for such experiments. Unlike the existing simulators, SimBlock can easily change behavior of nodes, so that it enables to investigate the influence of nodes' behavior on blockchains. We compared some simulation results with the measured values in actual blockchains to demonstrate the validity of this simulator. Furthermore, to show practical usage, we conducted two experiments which clarify the influence of neighbor node selection algorithms and relay networks on the block propagation time. The simulator could depict the effects of the two techniques on block propagation time. The simulator will be publicly available in a few months.
Alberto Sonnino, Michał Król, Argyrios G. Tasiopoulos, Ioannis Psaras
Recent developments in blockchains and edge computing allows to deploy decentralized shared economy with utility tokens, where altcoins secure and reward useful work. However, the majority of the systems being developed, does not provide mechanisms to pair workers and clients, or rely on manual and insecure resolution. AStERISK bridges this gap allowing to perform sealed-bid auctions on blockchains, automatically determine the most optimal price for services, and assign clients to the most suitable workers. AStERISK allows workers to specify a minimal price for their work, and hide submitted bids as well the identity of the bidders without relying on any centralized party at any point. We provide a smart contract implementation of AStERISK and show how to deploy it within the Filecoin network, and perform an initial benchmark on Chainspace.
Jiafu Wan, Jiapeng Li, Muhammad Imran, Di Li · 5 authors
Through the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), a smart factory has entered the booming period. However, as the number of nodes and network size become larger, the traditional IIoT architecture can no longer provide effective support for such enormous system. Therefore, we introduce the Blockchain architecture, which is an emerging scheme for constructing the distributed networks, to reshape the traditional IIoT architecture. First, the major problems of the traditional IIoT architecture are analyzed, and the existing improvements are summarized. Second, we introduce a security and privacy model to help design the Blockchain-based architecture. On this basis, we decompose and reorganize the original IIoT architecture to form a new multicenter partially decentralized architecture. Then, we introduce some relative security technologies to improve and optimize the new architecture. After that we design the data interaction process and the algorithms of the architecture. Finally, we use an automatic production platform to discuss the specific implementation. The experimental results show that the proposed architecture provides better security and privacy protection than the traditional architecture. Thus, the proposed architecture represents a significant improvement of the original architecture, which provides a new direction for the IIoT development.
Mahmood A. Rashid, Krishneel Deo, Divnesh Prasad, K. Ranjith Singh · 6 authors
Blockchain is an emerging technology framework for creating and storing\ntransaction in distributed ledgers with a high degree of security and\nreliability. In this paper we present a blockchain-based platform to create and\nstore contracts in between students and their higher education sponsors. The\nsponsorship might be in any form, such as scholarship, donation or loan. The\nfund will be arranged and managed by a group of competitive agents\n(Fundraisers) who will hold the distributed ledgers and act as miners in the\nblockchain network.\n
Mozhdeh Farhadi, Daniele Miorandi, Guillaume Pierre
IoT provides services by connecting smart devices to the Internet, and exploiting data generated by said devices to enable value-added services to individuals and businesses. In such cases, if data is exposed, tampered or lost, the service would not behave correctly. In this article, we discuss data security in IoT applications across five dimensions: confidentiality, integrity, authenticity, non-repudiation and availability. We discuss how distributed ledger technology could be used to overcome these issues and propose to use a fog computing architecture as decentralized computational support to deploy the ledger.
Medical care has become one of the most indispensable parts of human lives, leading to a dramatic increase in medical big data. To streamline the diagnosis and treatment process, healthcare professionals are now adopting Internet of Things (IoT)-based wearable technology. Recent years have witnessed billions of sensors, devices, and vehicles being connected through the Internet. One such technology-remote patient monitoring-is common nowadays for the treatment and care of patients. However, these technologies also pose grave privacy risks and security concerns about the data transfer and the logging of data transactions. These security and privacy problems of medical data could result from a delay in treatment progress, even endangering the patient's life. We propose the use of a blockchain to provide secure management and analysis of healthcare big data. However, blockchains are computationally expensive, demand high bandwidth and extra computational power, and are therefore not completely suitable for most resource-constrained IoT devices meant for smart cities. In this work, we try to resolve the above-mentioned issues of using blockchain with IoT devices. We propose a novel framework of modified blockchain models suitable for IoT devices that rely on their distributed nature and other additional privacy and security properties of the network. These additional privacy and security properties in our model are based on advanced cryptographic primitives. The solutions given here make IoT application data and transactions more secure and anonymous over a blockchain-based network.
Tharuka Rupasinghe, Frada Burstein, Carsten Rudolph, Steven K. Strange
Falls are one of the major health concerns for the elderly people. These falls often result in severe injuries which lead into huge medical expenses. Over the recent years, many ICT based fall detection and fall prevention solutions emerged to address the risk factors associated with falls. However, despite of these research studies, predicting the likelihood of falls still remains as a huge challenge in both medical and IT research domains. Data related to these risk factors being scattered among different healthcare providers can be attributed as a main reason for this challenge. This is further amplified by healthcare providers being reluctant to disseminate the data beyond their entities due to the security and privacy concerns. However, in recent years, blockchain has been proven as a promising technology to address the security and privacy challenges in healthcare data exchange as it provides a shared, immutable, and transparent audit trail for accessing data. Therefore, in this paper, we are going to propose a conceptual blockchain based fall prediction model leveraging smart contracts and FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) standard to identify the elderly people who are at a higher risk of falling.
Tsung-Ting Kuo, Hugo Zavaleta Rojas, Lucila Ohno‐Machado
OBJECTIVES: To introduce healthcare or biomedical blockchain applications and their underlying blockchain platforms, compare popular blockchain platforms using a systematic review method, and provide a reference for selection of a suitable blockchain platform given requirements and technical features that are common in healthcare and biomedical research applications. TARGET AUDIENCE: Healthcare or clinical informatics researchers and software engineers who would like to learn about the important technical features of different blockchain platforms to design and implement blockchain-based health informatics applications. SCOPE: Covered topics include (1) a brief introduction to healthcare or biomedical blockchain applications and the benefits to adopt blockchain; (2) a description of key features of underlying blockchain platforms in healthcare applications; (3) development of a method for systematic review of technology, based on the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) statement, to investigate blockchain platforms for healthcare and medicine applications; (4) a review of 21 healthcare-related technical features of 10 popular blockchain platforms; and (5) a discussion of findings and limitations of the review.
Konstantinos Loizou, Dimka Karastoyanova, Christos N. Schizas
Blockchain is a technology with potential for making ground breaking steps in addressing social, economic and healthcare challenges. The global information technology scene is being overcrowded with blockchain applications with special focus on the vast healthcare market [12]. The value of information related to healthcare creates a clear path for applying blockchain as a solution for some of the challenges in the healthcare sector, in particular with the goal of creating a fair and transparent way for sharing information and patient data. It is however a fact that while blockchain technology introduces additional complexity to the implementation healthcare software, the benefit the technology actually brings still remains unclear and difficult to evaluate. This vision paper demonstrates our research focus on providing a body of knowledge and tools to help evaluate this impact of blockchain on eHealth applications. In particular, we identify that such a research effort has to explicitly consider cost of addressing challenges inherent to the eHealth domain like integration of disparate software systems (hospitals, research institutions, government agencies, health insurance and pharmaceutical companies, etc.), the potential introduction of cryptocurrencies in healthcare systems, degree of patient service improvement, transparency and compliance to laws and regulations, and others. The more traditional influencing factors, like cost of development and running, licenses for using third-party software services, and the ones inherent to blockchain like cost of computation and energy will also have to be taken into consideration in the metrics model.
Asad Ali Siyal, Aisha Zahid Junejo, Muhammad Zawish, Kainat Ahmed · 6 authors
Blockchain technology has gained considerable attention, with an escalating interest in a plethora of numerous applications, ranging from data management, financial services, cyber security, IoT, and food science to healthcare industry and brain research. There has been a remarkable interest witnessed in utilizing applications of blockchain for the delivery of safe and secure healthcare data management. Also, blockchain is reforming the traditional healthcare practices to a more reliable means, in terms of effective diagnosis and treatment through safe and secure data sharing. In the future, blockchain could be a technology that may potentially help in personalized, authentic, and secure healthcare by merging the entire real-time clinical data of a patient’s health and presenting it in an up-to-date secure healthcare setup. In this paper, we review both the existing and latest developments in the field of healthcare by implementing blockchain as a model. We also discuss the applications of blockchain, along with the challenges faced and future perspectives.
With the development of the network, the number of digital productions is increasing rapidly and produce the demand for copyright protection of them. However, for a long time, both technological and institutional efforts have made some progress, they have not solved this problem very well. The phenomenon of infringement and piracy is still common among the network. In recent years, with the emergence of blockchain, it is hopeful to propose an excellent solution for this problem by taking its trustworthiness as a bridge and combining encryption technology and protection institution. Taking the idea of the Big Data Copyright Protection system as an example, this paper puts forward a detailed design scheme for the blockchain subsystem. The scheme shows the implementation of system's trustworthiness and a prototype is established using Hyperledger Fabric. We also take an experiment to test the performance of the core operations of the prototype with the observation of the resource utilization which proves that blockchain technology can meet most of the application demands. The goal of blockchain technology and continuous development are expected to bring better experience in the future.
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
The consensus algorithm played a significant role in successful adoption of Blockchain technology. The security of bitcoin blockchain hugely depends on the complexity and reliability of the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus. However, a non-financial application, whose security requirements are less demanding, requires faster operation and so PoW is not suitable for many of the commercial applications. In this paper, we propose a lightweight Trust-dependent Consensus scheme (TCON) for a blockchain based IoT access control framework. TCON ensures that the blocks are added at a faster rate, spending minimal energy compared to PoW based systems. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time the notion of trust is quantified and used as a means to simplify the consensus problem in blockchain. A comparison of the various metrics to understand the differences in overhead involved suggest that the proposed scheme outperforms other non-trust-based consensus schemes.
The promise of immutable documents to make it easier and less expensive for consumers and producers to collaborate in a verifiable way would represent an enormous progress, especially as companies strive for establish service contracts which are based on the flow of many small transactions using machine-to-machine communication. The blockchain technology logs these data, verifies the authenticity and make them available for service offers. This work deal with an architecture enabling to setup order processing between consumers and producers using blockchain. In this way, the technical feasibility is shown and the special characteristics of blockchain production networks will be discussed.