Preservation of Sensitive Data Using Multi-Level Blockchain-based Secured Framework for Edge Network Devices

Abstract

The proliferation of IoT devices has influenced end users in several aspects. Yottabytes (YB) of information are being produced in the IoT environs because of the ever-increasing utilization capacity of the Internet. Since sensitive information, as well as privacy problems, always seem to be an unsolved problem, even with best-in-class in-formation governance standards, it is difficult to bolster defensive security capabilities. Secure data sharing across disparate systems is made possible by blockchain technology, which operates on a decentralized computing paradigm. In the ever-changing IoT environments, blockchain technology provides irreversibility (immutability) usage across a wide range of services and use cases. Therefore, blockchain technology can be leveraged to securely hold private information, even in the dynamicity context of the IoT. However, as the rate of change in IoT networks accelerates, every potential weak point in the system is exposed, making it more challenging to keep sensitive data se-cure. In this study, we adopted a Multi-level Blockchain-based Secured Framework (M-BSF) to provide multi-level protection for sensitive data in the face of threats to IoT-based networking systems. The envisioned M-BSF framework incorporates edge-level, fog-level, and cloud-level security. At edge- and fog-level security, baby kyber and scaling kyber cryptosystems are applied to ensure data preservation. Kyber is a cryptosystem scheme that adopts public-key encryption and private-key decryption processes. Each block of the blockchain uses the cloud-based Argon-2di hashing method for cloud-level data storage, providing the highest level of confidentiality. Argon-2di is a stable hashing algorithm that uses a hybrid approach to access the memory that relied on dependent and independent memory features. Based on the attack-resistant rate (> 96%), computational cost (in time), and other main metrics, the proposed M-BSF security architecture appears to be an acceptable alternative to the current methodologies.