Securing IoT Applications using Blockchain: A Survey

The Internet of Things (IoT) has become a guiding technology behind automation and smart computing. One of the major concerns with the IoT systems is the lack of privacy and security preserving schemes for controlling access and ensuring the security of the data. A majority of security issues arise because of the centralized architecture of IoT systems. Another concern is the lack of proper authentication and access control schemes to moderate access to information generated by the IoT devices. So the question that arises is how to ensure the identity of the equipment or the communicating node. The answer to secure operations in a trustless environment brings us to the decentralized solution of Blockchain. A lot of research has been going on in the area of convergence of IoT and Blockchain, and it has resulted in some remarkable progress in addressing some of the significant issues in the IoT arena. This work reviews the challenges and threats in the IoT environment and how integration with Blockchain can resolve some of them.