Bringing Privacy, Security and Performance to the Internet of Things Through Usage Control and Blockchains

The Internet of Things (IoT) is bringing new ways to collect and analyse data to develop applications answering or anticipating users’ needs. These data may be privacy-sensitive, requiring efficient privacy-preserving mechanisms. The IoT is a distributed system of unprecedented scale, creating challenges for performance and security. Classic blockchains could be a solution by providing decentralisation and strong security guarantees. However they are not efficient and scalable enough for large scale IoT systems, and available tools designed for preserving privacy in blockchains, e.g. coin mixing, have a limited effect due to transaction cost and rate. This article provides a framework based on several technologies to address the requirements of privacy, security and performance of the Internet of Things. The basis of the framework is the IOTA technology, a derivative of blockchains relying on a directed acyclic graph to create transactions instead of a linear chain. IOTA unlocks distributed ledgers performance by increasing throughput as more users join the network, making the network scalable. IOTA being not designed for privacy protection, we complement it by privacy-preserving mechanisms: merge avoidance and decentralised mixing. Finally, privacy is reinforced by introducing usage control mechanisms for users to monitor the use and the dissemination of their data.