How to Use Blockchain To Secure Internet Of Things

Along with the Internet of Things, Blockchain is another equally talked about technology in the present world. These technologies have started being matured, and the application of both internets of Things and Blockchain in several real-world use cases is increasing. Various industries are trying to find interesting uses of these technologies for drawing the benefits. 

Internet of Things (Internet of Things) has received appreciation from both small and large scale enterprises and individual customers. But, the adoption and application of this technology on the greater level has raised many security concerns also. One of the significant challenges in the Internet of Things world is security. The present article will underline the view that how can using Blockchain technology enable the Internet of Things security.

Blockchain is a decentralized database technology, enables hard to tamper ledger records and allows maintaining track of all the transactions as immutable records that are distributed across many participant nodes. Blockchain ensures high-level security by using robust cryptographic public-key, cryptographic hash, and transparent decentralization. Blockchain this way facilitates a secure and robust network of distributed nodes and decentralized data. Blockchain technology offers several key strengths that have made the technology popular among companies. These strengths involve:

• Blockchain technology is entirely temper resistant, and any alteration requires authentication from all the nodes participating in the network.

• The blockchain platform is highly scalable as it is a peer-to-peer network with not a single point of failure.

• It is capable of building an immutable system of records for all the participants in the network.

Areas where Blockchain can be applied in the Internet of Things?

With the enhancing adoption of the Internet of Things in the mainstream industry, the challenges of the technology is fast emerging, and one of the most challenged areas of Internet of Things deployment is security. The major areas where the challenges of the Internet of Things infrastructure and services security arises are mentioned below:

• As the prospect of devices grows exponentially in the Internet of Things infrastructure, identifying, authenticating, and securing the devices in the network is becoming a significant concern and a huge challenge.

• Scaling, managing, and maintaining a centralized security model is a significantly expensive and challenging job, and such a system usually is vulnerable to security threats.

• The centralized security infrastructure which exists within the Internet of Things network introduces a single point of failure that makes it exposed to DDoS attacks.

• The centralized security infrastructure is hard to implement in the industrial system of operations because industrial setup, edge nodes in the network are geographically widespread.

Unlike this, Blockchain development offers a decentralized infrastructure that eliminates the possibility of online attacks in the network. Blockchain technology, with its key strengths, seems to be an effective way to overcome the challenges of the Internet of Things.

Cases that use Blockchain 

The application of Blockchain in the Internet of Things security can leverage the direct exchange of information between the connected devices rather than sharing essential data and communication through a centralized network. This way, Blockchain reduces the vulnerability of the Internet of Things security infrastructure to cyber-attacks and online threats. In the USA, major sectors, including pharmaceuticals, transportation and logistics, and the energy sector, have adopted the highest Blockchain applications in the Internet of Things powered businesses. These sectors involve transportation of physical goods as the main operation, and the majority of them are veterans companies in the Internet of Things industry.

Blockchain allows a secured connection for the Internet of Things devices by creating a connected mesh network. It can ensure a more reliable elimination of threats related to devising spoofing and impersonation.

Every Internet of Things node will have a Blockchain id when registered on the Blockchain network, and this id will exclusively identify every node device. For connecting a device to another, the user needs to use the unique Blockchain id, and a local Blockchain wallet is required to be used to make an identity request. The target device then validates the digital signature using the public key of requesting device, and this way, M2M authentication takes place without requiring a centralized arbitrator or service.

Such a solution applies to many Internet of Things services, including intelligent healthcare connected vehicles, the logistics industry, and the transportation sector. 

Though Blockchain provides natural protection of stored data and ensures the prevention of typical attacks on distributed systems, Blockchain with the Internet of Things requires specific security mechanisms. The process before transaction validation or even a block in the network is not secured. Except for validating the transaction, Blockchain itself is incapable of detecting fraudulent attempts.

Internet of Things and Blockchain together are capable of processing and exchanging a large amount of data without human interventions. Such information contains data that is supposed to be protected and kept private, making it an attractive target for attackers. Therefore, the Internet of Things’ centralized security alone cannot cover such critical data from cyber-threats. The combination of the Internet of Things and Blockchain can be presenting quite robust solutions to handle this security issue. They are quite powerful together as Blockchain enables resilience to attacks and interaction between peers in a more reliable and auditable way. Blockchain’s constant integration with the Internet of Things domain may result in significant changes across industries, creating new business models and guiding us to reconsider how current systems are implemented.

The Blockchain, along with offering money transfers, also allows information transfer and distributes resources between different nodes by activating Blockchain as a Service. Blockchain provides extensive benefits for the devices connected with the technology with its immutable characteristics. 

Therefore, Blockchain offers numerous promising opportunities for the future of the Internet of Things. Despite the challenges that arose in applying the combination of Blockchain and the Internet of Things, the collaboration has shown opened way to many possibilities. Blockchain experts are already involved in several sectors experimenting with the successful application of Blockchain technology in the Internet of Things enables companies and leveraging the benefits of Blockchain technology for the Internet of Things industry. The Blockchain has the potential of revolutionizing the way of doing business by combining with the Internet of Things, and the security concerns in the Internet of Things seems to be overcoming the obstacles emerging in the way.