A Blockchain-Based Trusted Edge Platform in Edge Computing Environment

Abstract

Edge computing is a product of the evolution of IoT and the development of cloud computing technology, providing computing, storage, network, and other infrastructure close to users. Compared with the centralized deployment model of traditional cloud computing, edge computing solves the problems of extended communication time and high convergence traffic, providing better support for low latency and high bandwidth services. With the increasing amount of data generated by users and devices in IoT, security and privacy issues in the edge computing environment have become concerns. Blockchain, a security technology developed rapidly in recent years, has been adopted by many industries, such as finance and insurance. With the edge computing capability, deploying blockchain platforms/applications on edge computing platforms can provide security services for network edge environments. Although there are already solutions for integrating edge computing with blockchain in many IoT application scenarios, they slightly lack scalability, portability, and heterogeneous data processing. In this paper, we propose a trusted edge platform to integrate the edge computing framework and blockchain network for building an edge security environment. The proposed platform aims to preserve the data privacy of the edge computing client. The design based on the microservice architecture makes the platform lighter. To improve the portability of the platform, we introduce the Edgex Foundry framework and design an edge application module on the platform to improve the business capability of Edgex. Simultaneously, we designed a series of well-defined security authentication microservices. These microservices use the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain network to build a reliable security mechanism in the edge environment. Finally, we build an edge computing network using different hardware devices and deploy the trusted edge platform on multiple network nodes. The usability of the proposed platform is demonstrated by testing the round-trip time (RTT) of several important workflows. The experimental results demonstrate that the platform can meet the availability requirements in real-world usage scenarios.

Secure Decentralized IoT Service Platform Using Consortium Blockchain

“…The authors also detailed the implementation of their proposed platform that utilizes Hyperledger Fabric. Zhang et al [ 13 ] applied Hyperledger Fabric to facilitate secure device communications in the edge computing environment. However, device communications and manipulations on their proposed platform are implemented through tasks that are scheduled and executed outside the blockchain.…”

“…That is, overcoming the downsides of public permissionless blockchains for IoT communications by replacing them with consortium blockchains. A few research groups [ 11 , 12 , 13 ] explored the application of permissioned consortium blockchains and smart contracts in securing IoT communications and sensor data. However, they are either highly focused on a specific blockchain application of IoT, lack a robust system design, or miss an extensive evaluation of their proposed approach.…”

DSLs and Middleware Platforms in a Model-Driven Development Approach for Secure Predictive Maintenance Systems in Smart Factories

“…The gateway processes small load data to monitor control systems for smart homes, smart farms, and smart meters. Zhang et al [26] describe a trusted platform to preserve data privacy of edge computing clients via an edge secured environment that integrates EdgeX and the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain network. Platform portability is enhanced by using EdgeX and extending it to incorporate the Hyperledger via a collection of well-defined security authentication microservices.…”

An efficient dynamic access control and security sharing scheme using blockchain

“…Presently, many researchers have proposed many security and privacy empowerment methods in cloud environments (Mittal et al, 2021). The designed method should provide effective security enhancement and privacy data schemes while allowing data sharing with their different entities (Zhang et al, 2021a). The presented method has a general feature that strongly depends on the cloud service provider (CSP).…”