A Blockchain-Based Access Control Framework for Secured Data Sharing in Industrial Internet

The Industrial Internet is the integration and linking of big data, analytical tools, and wireless networks with physical and industrial equipment to distributed systems. Since the industrial data are shared, it is necessary to use access control techniques to regulate who or what can view or use data. Currently, most access control systems in the Industrial Internet are designed for cloud computing platforms, assuming that all the industrial data are shared through the cloud. In this paper, we consider another scenario where the industrial data are locally stored on the company side rather than the cloud side. For this scenario, we propose a distributed access control system based on blockchain and smart contract technologies. We also evaluate its performance under different system configurations.