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Securing IoTs with Blockchain
Securing IoTs with Blockchain

April 14, 2022

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IoTs are popular with companies worldwide. Whether it is monitoring equipment, improving customer engagement or optimizing company floor plans, and mobilizing office resources, IoTs empower businesses with a wealth of data.

Despite their many advantages, IoT devices have traditionally had few safeguards in place to secure the data they collect.
As a company that helped create the world’s largest full production blockchain solution for an industrial application, we notice the growing relevance of permission-based blockchains like Hyperledger in the sphere of IoT data security.
Before we explain how and why let us first look at what is Hyperledger.


What is Hyperledger?

Hyperledger is a distributed ledger framework launched by the Linux Foundation in December 2015. Hyperledger is a project consisting of different frameworks using which we can build blockchains.

It can be used by anyone to create their own personalized blockchain service. It provides many opportunities to businesses and developers, to develop various applications and blockchain networks using a dynamic suite of projects and frameworks.

Hyperledger is paving the way for superior collaboration amongst enterprises, developers, and businesses in the field of Distributed Ledger Technology. 

What is IoT?

IoT, short for the Internet of Things, is an ecosystem of interrelated computing devices which are connected to each other over the internet and can communicate and exchange data using embedded sensors without any human interaction.

An IoT system consists of four distinct parts:

  1. Sensors/Devices — Sensors or devices collect data. Used in tandem with other IoT devices, they form an IoT network.
  2. Connectivity — Collected information is sent to the cloud using Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc.
  3. Data Processing — The data in the cloud is processed by using software to extract meaningful information to gain actionable insights.
  4. User Interface — The information once processed can be finally used by the end-user. This data can be shared through emails, text messages, etc.

Securing IoT devices with blockchain

Integration of Hyperledger in the world of the Internet of Things is a widely emerging subject within the industrial blockchain community. IoT networks are not very secure and are exposed to external threats.

Individual devices used in IoT networks are often isolated without any administration to manage them while gaining physical access to them is easy.

Communication between the devices is usually wireless, with more of these having limited processing capability. This makes their secure implementation especially difficult. It is here where blockchain technology (such as Hyperledger that we mentioned earlier) offers a viable solution to improve the security aspect of IoT installations.

Accessibility to IoT data can be easily controlled by using Hyperledger which is a private permission-based blockchain. Hence, by design, only authorized parties can gain access as per the agreement made with them
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Blockchain empowers IoTs by building a trusted data sharing platform where identification of data sources is easy, thereby enforcing data immutability and security.

Four benefits of securing IoT devices with blockchain

  1. Security — IoT devices and their data are insecure and often, vulnerable to hacking. Blockchain provides an encryption standard that helps to keep data safe and secure from malicious activities.
  2. Privacy — Hyperledger utilizes a private blockchain mechanism. This means only authorized parties can access the ledger data. IoT devices can be added to the network in an authorized manner, thereby improving data security and privacy. Once the data is recorded on the blockchain network, it cannot be changed/altered making it tamper-proof.
  3. Identity management — In a blockchain network, every single device can have a unique identity. The data collected is immutable and it too can be uniquely identified.
  4. Reliability and transparency — Any data stored on a blockchain is immutable by design. In the context of IoTs, this gives end users the capability to verify the authenticity of the collected data. This helps foster transparency and accountability. This part is important especially when companies make decisions based on data collected by IoT devices.


In conclusion, permission-based blockchains such as Hyperledger offer a viable solution to the issue of IoT data security and privacy. As more and more companies base their decisions on the data collected by IoT devices, the integration of blockchain in the field of IoT is not a question of if, but when.

Hyperledger is the registered trademark of The Linux Foundation®


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