Security-Enhanced Operational Architecture for Decentralized Industrial Internet of Things: A Blockchain-Based Approach

The remarkable development of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has undoubtedly elevated industrial operations to a more intelligence and efficiency level, yet it has also introduced a range of security challenges. The widespread of intelligent IoT devices has greatly expanded the attack surface for cyber-attacks. Additionally, the cloud-based centralized management architecture of traditional IIoT is susceptible to single-point-of-failure, which exacerbates the security risks. Nowadays, the secure and decentralized nature of blockchain has been considered a promising solution to address the security and privacy challenges in IIoT. This article proposes a blockchain-based operational architecture for IIoT (SecureArchi- IIoT) to enhance security and privacy in IIoT operations. Under this architecture, a set of smart contracts are designed to provide operational functionalities that are suitable for actual industrial demands. An operational control policy is designed to realize precise and effective management of the operation permissions with distinct granularity. Furthermore, a reputation-based behavioral punishment mechanism is developed to enhance the security performance of the proposed architecture. The prototype of the proposed architecture is implemented in a private IIoT environment to demonstrate its feasibility and effectiveness. Experimental results confirm that the proposed architecture outperforms the traditional architecture in aspects of security and privacy and maintains acceptable real-time performance.