Volume 10, Number 10, July 2020

Data Confidentiality in P2P Communication and Smart Contracts of Blockchain in Industry 4.0

  Authors

Jan Stodt and Christoph Reich, University of Applied Sciences Furtwangen, Germany

  Abstract

Increased collaborative production and dynamic selection of production partners within industry 4.0 manufacturing leads to ever-increasing automatic data exchange between companies. Automatic and unsupervised data exchange creates new attack vectors, which could be used by a malicious insider to leak secrets via an otherwise considered secure channel without anyone noticing. In this paper we reflect upon approaches to prevent the exposure of secret data via blockchain technology, while also providing auditable proof of data exchange. We show that previous blockchain based privacy protection approaches offer protection, but give the control of the data to (potentially not trustworthy) third parties, which also can be considered a privacy violation. The approach taken in this paper is not utilize centralized data storage for data. It realizes data confidentiality of P2P communication and data processing in smart contracts of blockchains.

  Keywords

blockchain, privacy protection, P2P communication, smart contracts, industry 4.0.

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