Secure Data of Industrial Internet of Things in a Cement Factory Based on a Blockchain Technology

Abstract

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has become a pivotal field of development that can increase the efficiency of real-time collection, recording, analysis, and control of the entire activities of various machines, and can actively enhance quality and reduce costs. The traditional IIoT depends on centralized architectures that are vulnerable to several kinds of cyber-attacks, such as bottlenecks and single points of failure. Blockchain technology has emerged to change these architectures to a decentralized form. In modern industrial settings, blockchain technology is utilized for its ability to provide high levels of security, low computational complexity, P2P communication, transparent logs, and decentralization. The present work proposes the use of a private blockchain mechanism for an industrial application in a cement factory, which offers low power consumption, scalability, and a lightweight security scheme; and which can play an efficient role in controlling access to valuable data generated by sensors and actuators. A low-power ARM Cortex-M processor is utilized due to its efficiency in terms of processing cryptographic algorithms, and this plays an important part in improving the computational execution of the proposed architecture. In addition, instead of proof of work (PoW), our blockchain network uses proof of authentication (PoAh) as a consensus mechanism to ensure secure authentication, scalability, speed, and energy efficiency. Our experimental results show that the proposed framework achieves high levels of security, scalability and ideal performance for smart industrial environments. Moreover, we successfully realized the integration of blockchain technology with the industrial internet of things devices, which provides the blockchain technology features and efficient resistance to common cyber-security attacks.

Data Security Challenges with its Defence Strategies of Internet of Things: Critical Review Study

“…• Most of the studies were similar in using literature review, theoretical survey and content analysis methodologies, and the studies [2,4,6,12,13] were distinguished by proposing practical systems or models and then testing them, the study [7] was characterized by proposing a framework, but without testing it. As for the study [1], it was characterized by the use of critical review and comparative analysis.…”

“…• The two studies [1,13] were distinguished in that they talked about IoT that related to specific professional fields, such as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) in [13] and the Internet of Things for healthcare (HIoT) in [1].…”

Implementation of Ethereum Accounts and Transactions on Embedded IoT Devices

“…These functions are also at the basis of Ethereum transactions, but no aspects related to the blockchain are considered in that work. The authors of [9], instead, study how IoT and blockchain can be integrated by proposing a blockchain-based IoT network, where some network nodes are based on ARM Cortex-M microprocessors; however, they propose a strictly customized blockchain, which works in a completely different way from Ethereum. An analogous approach is proposed in [10].…”

An Adaptive Protection System for Sensor Networks Based on Analysis of Neighboring Nodes

“…Received packets: −1 < DL ij < 1; −1 < DL ji < 1 Sent packets: −0.5 <DL ij < 0.5; −0.5 <DL ji <0. 5 CPU load: −0.02 < D ij < 0; 0 < D ji < 0.02 Payload in the normal range increases in the normal range…”

“…Many proposals to protect sensor networks include the use of Blockchain technologies. The blockchain must ensure trusted use of the sensor network's infrastructure, which ultimately increases security [5]. However, blockchain is a rather complex and resource-intensive technology, in which trust is achieved using signatures, as in classical cryptography [6].…”