The Internet of Things (IoT) is the next era of communication. Using the IoT, physical objects can be empowered to create, receive, and exchange data in a seamless manner. Various IoT applications focus on automating different tasks and are trying to empower the inanimate physical objects to act without any human intervention. The existing and upcoming IoT applications are highly promising to increase the level of comfort, efficiency, and automation for the users. To be able to implement such a world in an ever-growing fashion requires high security, privacy, authentication, and recovery from attacks. In this regard, it is imperative to make the required changes in the architecture of the IoT applications for achieving end-to-end secure IoT environments. In this paper, a detailed review of the security-related challenges and sources of threat in the IoT applications is presented. After discussing the security issues, various emerging and existing technologies focused on achieving a high degree of trust in the IoT applications are discussed. Four different technologies, blockchain, fog computing, edge computing, and machine learning, to increase the level of security in IoT are discussed.

/pdf/a-survey-on-iot-security-application-areas-security-threats-1gb31j78px.pdf

A Survey on IoT Security: Application Areas, Security Threats, and Solution Architectures

The blockchain technology has revolutionized the digital currency space with the pioneering cryptocurrency platform named Bitcoin. From an abstract perspective, a blockchain is a distributed ledger capable of maintaining an immutable log of transactions happening in a network. In recent years, this technology has attracted significant scientific interest in research areas beyond the financial sector, one of them being the Internet of Things (IoT). In this context, the blockchain is seen as the missing link toward building a truly decentralized, trustless, and secure environment for the IoT and, in this survey, we aim to shape a coherent and comprehensive picture of the current state-of-the-art efforts in this direction. We start with fundamental working principles of blockchains and how blockchain-based systems achieve the characteristics of decentralization, security, and auditability. From there, we build our narrative on the challenges posed by the current centralized IoT models, followed by recent advances made both in industry and research to solve these challenges and effectively use blockchains to provide a decentralized, secure medium for the IoT.

/pdf/applications-of-blockchains-in-the-internet-of-things-a-1iej4awnap.pdf

Applications of Blockchains in the Internet of Things: A Comprehensive Survey

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the interconnection of smart devices to collect data and make intelligent decisions. However, a lack of intrinsic security measures makes IoT vulnerable to privacy and security threats. With its "security by design," Blockchain (BC) can help in addressing major security requirements in IoT. BC capabilities like immutability, transparency, auditability, data encryption and operational resilience can help solve most architectural shortcomings of IoT. This article presents a comprehensive survey on BC and IoT integration. The objective of this paper is to analyze the current research trends on the usage of BC-related approaches and technologies in an IoT context. This paper presents the following novelties, with respect to related work: (i) it covers different application domains, organizing the available literature according to this categorization, (ii) it introduces two usage patterns, i.e., device manipulation and data management (open marketplace solution), and (iii) it reports on the development level of some of the presented solutions. We also analyze the main challenges faced by the research community in the smooth integration of BC and IoT, and point out the main open issues and future research directions. Last but not least, we also present a survey about novel uses of BC in the machine economy.

https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/18/8/2575/pdf

Blockchain and IoT Integration: A Systematic Survey.

A Comprehensive Survey on Attacks, Security Issues and Blockchain Solutions for IoT and IIoT

A systematic literature review of blockchain cyber security

Recently, the popularity of the Internet of Things (IoT) has led to a rapid development and significant advancement of ubiquitous applications seamlessly integrated within our daily life. Owing to the accompanying growth of the importance of privacy, a great deal of attention has focused on the issues of secure management and robust access control of IoT devices. In this paper, we propose the design of a blockchain connected gateway which adaptively and securely maintains user privacy preferences for IoT devices in the blockchain network. Individual privacy leakage can be prevented because the gateway effectively protects users’ sensitive data from being accessed without their consent. A robust digital signature mechanism is proposed for the purposes of authentication and secure management of privacy preferences. Furthermore, we adopt the blockchain network as the underlying architecture of data processing and maintenance to resolve privacy disputes.

A Blockchain Connected Gateway for BLE-Based Devices in the Internet of Things

Internet of Things (IoT) devices have brought much efficiency and convenience to our daily life. However, the devices may collect a myriad of data from people without their consent. Controlling the large amount of data generated from the devices from being misused is critical to mitigate privacy risks. Therefore, privacy protection on personal data has become an important factor in the development of the IoT. Historically, privacy enhancing technologies (PETs) can effectively enhance the privacy and protect users’ personally identifiable information. To date, many researchers have stressed the importance of PETs and proposed solutions relevant to different application fields of the IoT. However, to the best of our knowledge, none of the research has analyzed the PETs in IoT from the aspects of privacy threat issues and privacy legislation. As a result, this paper surveys on the solutions of PETs in the field of IoT, which has filtered down from the large number of published academic papers to the 120 primary studies published between 2014 and 2017. After collecting the papers, we categorized them based on the functions and the coverage of privacy protection, and analyzed them from different aspects, ranging from high-level principles of general data protection regulations and ISO/IEC 29100:2011 requirements to the actual resolution of privacy threats in IoT. Thus, we aim to identify the current state of development of the PETs in various fields and examine whether the existing PETs comply with the latest legal principles and privacy standards and reduce the threats to privacy. Finally, recommendations for future research are given based on the results.

Privacy Enhancing Technologies in the Internet of Things: Perspectives and Challenges

To protect collected personal data, current data protection laws and regulations usually request organizations that accumulate and use personal data to adopt reasonable security safeguards In this case, risk assessment approaches enable organizations to specify security controls as appropriate risks to their personal data This paper proposes a data-driven risk assessment approach for personal data protection In the proposed approach, an organization can model flows of collected personal data using extended data flow diagrams In addition to recognizing scenarios of personal data collection and usage, the organization can identify components used to process, store, and transmit data Based on associated components for further risk evaluation, the organization can identify potential incidents to each personal data Compared to a traditional asset-oriented risk assessment approach, the proposed method diminishes risks to assets associated with sensitive personal data In addition, compared to a process-oriented risk assessment approach, our approach prevents organizations from overlooking risks to sensitive data that are not used in critical business processes While the proposed approach can improve the risk assessment accuracy of personal data protection, the study may hopefully help organizations adopt more appropriate security safeguards to protect personal data

A Data-Driven Security Risk Assessment Scheme for Personal Data Protection

The deployment of IoT devices with significant data collection capabilities around the world raises concerns about user privacy. People are worried about ubiquitous IoT devices collecting and sharing their data with unknown parties without their awareness or consent. Currently, several governmental agencies have stated that IoT service providers should obtain user consent before collecting and using their personal data. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no standard means for users to reach agreements on privacy practices for IoT applications. Among different types of IoT applications, this paper focuses on the scenario in which people use their personal smartphones to access nearby IoT devices via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). To address the privacy issue in the scenario, this paper proposes a privacy preferences expression framework for BLE-based applications named PrivacyBat. The framework defines specifications for users to achieve agreements on privacy practices with nearby BLE devices. In addition, this framework provides guidelines for a device to process user requests according to the agreement. To demonstrate how the framework operates, this paper further provides a proof of concept implementation. As the proposed framework can improve the privacy policy agreement process in IoT applications, this paper can hopefully contribute to increasing user trust in IoT applications.

A User-Friendly Privacy Framework for Users to Achieve Consents With Nearby BLE Devices

In this study, we utilize a blockchain network as the underlying communication architecture to construct an ISO/IEC 15408-2 compliant security auditing system. The proposed system is an evolutionary paradigm not only seamlessly integrating the advantages, i.e., de-centralization, robustness and tamper-resistance, of the blockchain network, but fulfilling the critical auditing requirements identified by ISO/IEC 15408-2. Versatile intelligent applications, including IoT (Internet of Things) and AI (Artificial Intelligence) robots, are highly suitable to adopt our security auditing system.

Shi-Cho Cha

Papers

A Blockchain Connected Gateway for BLE-Based Devices in the Internet of Things

Privacy Enhancing Technologies in the Internet of Things: Perspectives and Challenges

A Data-Driven Security Risk Assessment Scheme for Personal Data Protection

A User-Friendly Privacy Framework for Users to Achieve Consents With Nearby BLE Devices

An ISO/IEC 15408-2 Compliant Security Auditing System with Blockchain Technology