A Study on Leveraging Blockchain Technology for IoT Security Enhancement

In the rapidly growing digital and technological world, Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming very popular and widely implemented. As more and more IoT devices are deployed in an uncontrolled, complex and often hostile environment, securing the IoT devices, systems and data exchange presents numerous unique challenges. With data sensitive IoT applications, there is an utmost need to protect and explore user privacy, access control, third party involvement, and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) information exchange in order to avoid critical security breach and cyberattacks. Most of the security and privacy issues of the interconnected heterogeneous resource constrained smart IoT devices are unable to be solved efficiently by traditional security practices. On the other hand, Blockchain technology is well-thought-out as emerging and revolutionary concept, initiated from cryptocurrency, and now making way to enhance various scenarios in digital paradigm, mainly due to its decentralized nature and transparency. This paper reviews the adoption of IoT in various fields and its applications to automate and improve living conditions, along with security and privacy risks arising from organization and functioning of different IoT components. Moreover, the study is specifically based on how effectively the Blockchain technology can be leveraged for strengthening IoT security and privacy implications, and possible limitations of embedding Blockchain with IoT framework.