Data Confidentiality In P2P Communication And Smart Contracts Of Blockchain In Industry 4.0

TL;DR

This paper explores methods to enhance data confidentiality in Industry 4.0's P2P blockchain communications and smart contracts, addressing privacy concerns without relying on centralized data storage.

Contribution

It proposes a decentralized approach to ensure data confidentiality and auditable proof of data exchange in blockchain-based Industry 4.0 environments.

Findings

Existing blockchain privacy methods transfer control to third parties

Decentralized data confidentiality can be achieved without centralized storage

Proposed approach maintains privacy and auditability in P2P smart contract communication

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.