Data privacy, security and immutability are elements of utmost importance in every IoT ecosystem, and is one of the main pylons of the TERMINET project, within which a task of developing a blockchain framework in order to enhance security and privacy has been foreseen.
Before moving any further, the term “blockchain” should be explained: A blockchain is a chain of sequentially linked transactions, in the form of blocks that once they connect to the chain, they become immutable. Those blocks are written on the blockchain ledger, which is distributed among the blockchain participants and regularly updated. From the aforementioned sentence, one can probably understand that a major key word is “immutable”, which is one of the key features for any blockchain. Having a way of keeping consistent, tamper-proof information through all participants is a great way of building trust while enforcing accountability and transparency, making the network secure. As for the issue of privacy, not everyone will have access to the information stored at the ledger, since the blockchain network will require some sort of registration that will be restricted to the consortium partners. Furthermore, the right to view certain data will be restricted to entities of the network, only the ones that are allowed to access the data in real-life and with the fact that the ledger is tamper proof, the whole system will be privacy oriented.
It is now apparent that a network based on blockchain technologies is a secure and potentially private system, therefore it can be used vertically throughout the TERMINET architecture and in all use cases/demonstrations. In some use cases, sensitive and private data are involved, which means that all aspects that make blockchain an important asset will be put to test, in order to properly protect and handle the given data.
The TERMINET project will research ways to ensure and improve the security, trust and effectiveness of IoT networks, and suggest novel ways to extend it.