BlockEdge: A Privacy-Aware Secured Edge Computing Framework Using Blockchain for Industry 4.0.

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Cybersecurity
• Distributed Systems

Background:

• Edge computing offers numerous benefits but faces significant data privacy and security challenges.
• Existing authentication methods rely on a single trusted entity, leading to single points of failure and scalability issues.
• Preventing intruder attacks and ensuring only authentic users access data storage are critical in edge environments.

Purpose of the Study:

• To address the limitations of centralized authentication in edge computing.
• To propose a decentralized authentication framework for edge computing using blockchain technology.
• To enhance data privacy, security, and system scalability in edge computing environments.

Main Methods:

• Implementation of a decentralized approach by integrating a blockchain paradigm into edge computing.
• Development of an automated authentication process that eliminates manual registration for users and servers.
• Evaluation of the proposed architecture through experimental results and performance analysis.

Main Results:

• The proposed decentralized architecture effectively eliminates the need for a single trusted entity.
• The blockchain-based authentication scheme ensures automatic and secure access for users and servers.
• Experimental analysis demonstrates superior performance compared to existing authentication methods in edge computing.

Conclusions:

• The decentralized blockchain approach offers a robust solution to edge computing's authentication and security challenges.
• This novel architecture significantly improves system reliability and scalability by removing single points of failure.
• The findings confirm the practical benefits and enhanced performance of the proposed method in edge computing domains.