A Smart Contract-Based Access Control Framework For Smart Healthcare Systems

Abstract

Security faces huge challenges in Internet of Things (IoT) environments. In particular, conventional access control standards and models tend to be less tailored for IoT due to the constrained nature of smart objects. Usually, a powerful third party is used to handle the access control logic. However, this third party is lacking in transparency and could harm user privacy. Therefore, providing a distributed access control solution, while considering transparency and privacy-preserving awareness in IoT smart systems, is of paramount importance. The described issue can be addressed using the emergent Blockchain technology that provides a promising choice to build a new generation of decentralized and transparent access control solutions. This paper proposes a smart contract-based access control framework for IoT smart healthcare systems, which is based on smart contracts to provide a distributed and trustworthy access control, combined with the GTRBAC model to express fine-grained access control policies while considering temporal authorization constraints. To prove the feasibility and validity of the proposed framework, this paper also provides a detailed technical description and an initial implementation and execution. An experimental evaluation shows that security properties’ analyses on smart contracts achieved the best possible evaluation with no vulnerabilities found, and the cost of access control operations increases linearly as the number of policy constraints increases. Besides, a comparative analysis reveals that the proposed approach can achieve good results with low gas costs and latency.

Performance, privacy and security issues at the TCP internet layer

“…Control mechanisms, such as firewalls, intrusion detection/prevention systems, access controls, and network monitoring tools, play a critical role in managing network traffic, detecting anomalies, and enforcing security policies. However, mis-configuration or improper management of these mechanisms can inadvertently introduce vulnerabilities or disrupt network operations [191], [192]. Therefore, network administrators must exercise caution in configuring and deploying control mechanisms, ensuring they are aligned with organizational security policies and best practices [193].…”

A Smart Contract-Driven Access Control Schemewith Integrity Checking for Electronic Health Records

“…Wang et al [30] harmonized identity-based encryption (IBE) and blockchain to design a privacy-aware access control system. Saini et al [31] proposed a smart contract-based access control framework to secure the sharing of EMRs among different hospitals. In their proposal, four types of smart contracts are designed to realize access verification, permission management, and data exchange, respectively.…”