Soft-Trust Based Architecture for NextG IIoT/IoET Security, Authentication and Authorization

One of the biggest challenges in scalable deployments of massive machine type communication (mMTC) is the efficient, scalable and low-delay security and authentication solutions. MMTC involves Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Internet of Energy Things (IoET) in 5G/6G and Next Generation (NextG) Power Systems. Criticality of this challenge is amplified when considering characteristic limitations of typical IIoT & IoET devices and inherent lack of robust built-in security features. Scalable solutions for IIoT dynamic authentication and authorization could address many of the concerns. In this work, we review and propose an architecture for trust management of IIoT/IoET devices in NextG Systems using suitable trust tools and frameworks such as Blockchain. The proposed architecture adopts a two-tier hierarchical Blockchain-based consensus. To support scalability, we examine the benefits of utilizing a directed acyclic graph (DAG) data structure on the Blockchain.