Abstract

Internet of Things technology is becoming a vital source for converting things into smart cities, smart homes, smart industries, etc. IoT has the ability to connect billions of things and components to perform daily activities. Traditional devices are becoming more independent and intelligent by considering things over the internet. Blockchain technology appears to be a greater source to ensure security for IoT-based technologies and applications. The high growth of Internet of Things and smart applications are having high demand on security to maintain the authentication, integrity, and safety of IoT data. Integration of blockchain technology into IoT applications will provide a better solution to information security. With the integration of blockchain technology, security, throughput, efficiency, latency, multi-chain management, usability, etc. of IoT could be enabled on the applications. The blog is developed to identify the security complexities and ensure the blockchain solution to IoT applications. In this passage report, major security challenges and complexities are identified from the existing research and IoT-based applications. Additionally, the blockchain technology integration with IoT and its advantages to IoT-based application security can be achieved.

Introduction

The IoT applications are connected with millions of components and generate large volumes of data in frequent manners. The IOT applications includes sensitive data about user, industries and organisations. 

Figure 2: Architecture of IoT applications (Rasmeet Kaur, 2022)

Performing data processing and management through the network will affect the quality of data and cause security based issues to information. Some of the security issues of data loss, credential issues, authentications, unauthorized access, cyber security, and etc. In order to resolve the complexities in IoT application, some of the security based solutions and technologies could be required (Malak Alamri, 2019). 

Figure 3: Working mechanism of blockchain (Malak Alamri, 2019)

Integration of blockchain technology will ensure a better solution to resolve security issues. The blockchain technology is deployed with the concept of Distributed Ledger Technology. It has been developed for providing the convention-based validation of technologies across the network and covers complete word for facilitating end-to-end transactions as well as financial transactions. The mechanism of blockchain technology will helps to attain better security to the IoT based applications. 

Advantages

The blockchain technology will ensure many advantages and benefits to the IoT based applications. The advantages are as follows:

• The blockchain Distributed ledger will ensure the decentralised administration service, which includes multiple location-based data processing, coordinated, replicated, and shared digital data, which helps to improve the data protection. 
• Smart contracts have been ensured with blockchain technology, which helps to establish the autonomy of IoT applications, eliminates the regularity of overheads, and ensures high-level authority and collaboration (Ana Reyna, 2018). 
• The blockchain cryptocurrency technique will determine the control of the central authority in IoT. It helps to ensure the integrity of data when performing data transactions through the network. 
• The consensus protocol of blockchain will integrate and manage the information within the IoT applications, which also supports the agreement between the client and vendor. The protocol helps to represent the major critical part of the blockchain approach and which enables distributed network protection. 

Figure 5: Features of blockchain (Malak Alamri, 2019)

• The authentication and access control has been enabled by the blockchain approach in the IoT based applications. It helps to resolve the security based issues such as access control, unauthorised access, and cyber security complexities (Yuting Wu, 2022 ). 
• Additionally, the blockchain technology will ensuring the properties of decentralization, immutability, transparency, security, trust, privacy, as well as latency in the IoT based applications and components. 

The above mentioned advantages will ensure a better protection and safety to the IoT application and its data over network on different applications. 

Disadvantages 

Blockchain technology and IoT integration also include some challenges and complexities.

Scalability and storage capacity – Blockchain technology includes scalability limitations and inherent capacity challenges. IoT will create a huge volume of data from real-time applications. In this case, blockchain will appear to be not-suitable to IoT applications. 

Security – IoT is required to deal with different levels of security problems, and the additional complexities of high heterogeneity and lack of performance are increasing the security issue. Blockchain technology will provide trust-based security, but the main challenge of reliability in blockchain integration will reduce the security of IoT applications when data is generated. When corrupted data reaches the blockchain, it will fail to provide an accurate solution to IoT devices. 

Data privacy and Anonymity – When using the public blockchain, data privacy could be restricted from the IoT application. In real-time applications, user privacy information and sensitive data are required to be protected. But the privacy laws based on territory will restrict the applications and technology to access the information and securely use the data. 

Conclusion

The research ensures the integration of blockchain technology and its benefits within the Internet of Things and smart applications. Due to the large volume of data that is generated from IoT-based applications many security and data integrity complexities occurred. In order to improve security solutions and data protection, blockchain technology integration is performed. The features of blockchain technology and its benefits will help to increase data protection in IoT applications. The security complexities of different IoT application has been analyzed and so blockchain creates a greater impact in securing the information and data that are transferred from IoT application. 

References

Ana Reyna, C. M., 2018. On blockchain and its integration with IoT. Challenges and opportunities. Future Generation Computer Systems.

Malak Alamri, N. J., 2019. Blockchain for Internet of Things (IoT) Research Issues Challenges & Future Directions: A Review. IJCSNS International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, 19(5), pp. 244-258.

Md Ashraf Uddin, A. S., 2021. A survey on the adoption of blockchain in IoT: challenges and solutions. Blockchain: Research and Applications, Volume 2.

Rasmeet Kaur, A. A., 2022. Implementation of Blockchain in IoT. Emergent Converging Technologies and Biomedical Systems, pp. 149-161.

Yuting Wu, X. J. H. Y. L. T., 2022 . Blockchain-Based Internet of Things: Machine Learning Tea Sensing Trusted Traceability System. Journal of Sensors, pp. 1-16.