Improving an Identity Authentication Management Protocol in IIoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) is where almost anything can be controlled and managed remotely. Although the IoT evolution led to quality of life enhancement, many of its devices are insecure. The lack of robust key management systems, efficient identity authentication, low fault tolerance, and many other issues lead IoT devices into being easily targeted by attackers. The aim of this research is to enhance an authentication protocol that helps in the authentication process of IoT devices and CPANs (Personal Area Network Coordinators) in an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) environment. To propose a solution for this issue, and to find out the optimal contribution, a comparison and analysis on the current IoT security solutions have been conducted. Based on the analysis, it is found that the superior solution was a Blockchain-based solution called BCTrust. In this paper, the aim is to improve the basis authentication protocol adopted by BCTrust. The protocol is to be improved mainly by two sides, firstly, eliminating the blacklisting mechanism that can be leveraged by attackers to negatively impact the network. Secondly, introducing a new way for generating the identifiers of the IIoT devices. This would enhance the security and efficiency of BCTrust, specifically in the generation of IIoT secret keys.