Survey on Blockchain Enabled Authentication for Industrial Internet of Things

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) integrates heterogeneous industrial devices, intelligent sensors, and actuators to provide a new dimension to the industrial systems and environments. As the IIoT expands to various aspects of the Industry, devices from different industrial domains need to collaborate without compromising the privacy and security of the data being exchanged and stored. The biggest challenge IIoT is going to face is security and privacy. Any attack against an industrial environment can adversely affect human life, the quality of products, and permanent damage the machines for an extended period. Authentication is considered the first security control in IIoT system to ensure that the right user accesses the right resources. Blockchain is a distributed public ledger that contains blocks of tamper-proof data. Blockchain-based cybersecurity platforms can protect the connected de-vices in an IIoT platform using digital identities and can be used to authenticate the participating entities. A blockchain enabled IIoT platform has a decentralized infrastructure making it impossible for hackers to attack a network because all participants are immediately notified of any alterations. This work presented a critical review of the existing research works on the authentication solutions based on blockchain based technologies. The current research gaps were analyzed and discussed as well.