Access Control Framework for Cross-Platform Interoperability in the Industrial Internet of Things

The rapid advancement of the industrial Internet of things (IIoTs) has facilitated the development of diverse platforms and management technologies. However, the lack of standardized protocols and interoperability between platforms developed by various organizations hinders seamless integration. These limitations represent the primary challenge in access control between different IIoT platforms, resulting in limited service utilization across heterogeneous platforms. This study addresses the challenges of effectively sharing user attributes and representations for access control between heterogeneous IIoT platforms using blockchain and a metadata registry (MDR). Utilizing blockchain ensures tamper-proof and transparent attribute sharing, whereas the MDR facilitates the accurate mapping of user attributes for cross-platform resource access control. We demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed framework by successfully implementing access control between two representative standard platforms, namely oneM2M and FIWARE. Our results indicate that enhancing service utilization through access control between heterogeneous IIoT platforms can improve security and efficiency across various industries.