A blockchain-based architecture for secure and trustworthy operations in the industrial Internet of Things

Latif, Shahid; Idrees, Zeba; Ahmad, Jawad; Zheng, Lirong; Zou, Zhuo

Abstract

The industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) plays an important role in the industrial sector, where secure, scalable, and easily adopted technologies are being implemented for the smart industry. The traditional IIoT architectures are generally based on centralized architectures that are vulnerable to a single point of failure and to several cyber-attacks. Blockchain technology is frequently adopted in the modern industry because of its security and decentralization. This paper proposes a blockchain-based architecture that ensures secure and trustworthy industrial operations. A private and lightweight blockchain architecture is proposed to regulate access to valuable sensor and actuator data. To enhance the computational performance of the proposed architecture, real-time cryptographic algorithms are processed using a low-power ARM Cortex-M4 processor, and a highly scalable, fast, and energy-efficient consensus mechanism proof of authentication (PoAh) is deployed in the blockchain network. Extensive experiments and analysis proved the effectiveness of the proposed framework for smart industrial environments. Finally, we transform a conventional fruit processing plant into a secure and smart industrial platform by implementing the proposed architecture.

Citation

Latif, S., Idrees, Z., Ahmad, J., Zheng, L., & Zou, Z. (2021). A blockchain-based architecture for secure and trustworthy operations in the industrial Internet of Things. Journal of Industrial Information Integration, 21, Article 100190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jii.2020.100190

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 29, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Dec 8, 2020
• Publication Date: 2021-03
• Deposit Date: Dec 14, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 9, 2021
• Journal: Journal of Industrial Information Integration
• Print ISSN: 2452-414X
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 21
• Article Number: 100190
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jii.2020.100190
• Keywords: Blockchain, Cybersecurity, Distributed ledger, Industrial Internet of Things, Smart industry
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2710844