Improving Identity Management of Cloud-Based IoT Applications Using Blockchain

Identity Management (IDM) in cloud-based Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications is critical in many businesses. However, most conventional IDM systems are costly and hinder the innovation and greater customer experience. By using blockchain, a new way of managing the identities is proposed. This paper presents an initiative to improve IDM by integrating face recognition approach and blockchain technology in an integrated IoT -cloud application. To illustrate the proposed initiative, a decentralized campus wide printing service is chosen as a use case. In this use case, face recognition is used as an entry point to the service. Since face recognition involves a lot of complex computations and machine learning, this process is executed on a cloudlet, hence minimizing the need for massive data transfer to a distant cloud. Once a user's login information is digitally verified via immutable blockchain, smart contract is deployed to keep track of the user's printing activities. The integration of blockchain in this service has decentralized the IDM, automated the service, and kept the service inexpensive and transparent.