Implementing Security in IoT Systems via Blockchain

Abstract: With today’s day and age rapidly going digital, the emergence of the Internet of Things has become prominent and IoT systems are now being applied to almost every field. IoT systems can be seen being applied to fields such as healthcare, agriculture, manufacturing, and many more. As IoT systems encompass numerous devices, each of these devices becomes a target for attacks and exploitation; thus, IoT systems have long been associated with issues related to security. Hence, making IoT systems secure and safe is of paramount importance. While the Internet of Things has become a technology that is extremely widespread today due to the wide range of advantages it provides including scalability, dependence, and ease of access; the shortcomings and possible loopholes should also be accounted for. Currently, a client/server model or a centralized model of networking is employed in IoT devices. These devices also use a single gateway to transfer data between them and connect through a cloud server. This model has lots of shortcomings like the high cost of centralized cloud maintenance and network equipment and the cost will continue to rise with the increase in the number of devices and the volume of data. A Single gateway is not very secure as it allows gaining access to a whole IoT network by compromising a single device. To tackle the issue of security, we propose the inclusion of blockchain technology. A Blockchain is a distributed ledger where data is stored across various nodes all over the world, this eliminates the single point of failure. This project proposes the plethora of benefits that blockchain technology offers and aims to tackle the security aspect of IoT systems.