A Blockchain Solution for Enhancing Cybersecurity Defence of IoT

Abstract

The growth of IoT devices during the last decade has led to the development of smart ecosystems, such as smart homes, prone to cyberattacks. Traditional security methodologies support to some extend the requirement for preserving privacy and security of such deployments, but their centralized nature in conjunction with low computational capabilities of smart home gateways make such approaches not efficient. Last achievements on blockchain technologies allowed the use of such decentralized architectures to support cybersecurity defence mechanisms. In this work, a blockchain framework is presented to support the cybersecurity mechanisms of smart homes installations, focusing on the immutability of users and devices that constitute such environments. The proposed methodology provides also the appropriate smart contracts support for ensuring the integrity of the smart home gateway and IoT devices, as well as the dynamic and immutable management of blocked malicious IPs. The framework has been deployed on a real smart home environment demonstrating its applicability and efficiency.