Biometrics-Based Privacy-Preserving User Authentication Scheme for Cloud-Based Industrial Internet of Things Deployment

Due to the widespread popularity of Internet-enabled devices, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) becomes popular in recent years. However, as the smart devices share the information with each other using an open channel, i.e., Internet, so security and privacy of the shared information remains a paramount concern. There exist some solutions in the literature for preserving security and privacy in IIoT environment. However, due to their heavy computation and communication overheads, these solutions may not be applicable to wide category of applications in IIoT environment. Hence, in this paper, we propose a new biometric-based privacy preserving user authentication (BP2UA) scheme for cloud-based IIoT deployment. BP2UA consists of strong authentication between users and smart devices using preestablished key agreement between smart devices and the gateway node. The formal security analysis of BP2UA using the well-known real-or-random model is provided to prove its session key security. Moreover, an informal security analysis of BP2UA is also given to show its robustness against various types of known attacks. The computation and communication costs of BP2UA in comparison to the other existing schemes of its category demonstrate its effectiveness in the IIoT environment. Finally, the practical demonstration of BP2UA is also done using the NS2 simulation.

I. Introduction

Internet of Things (IoT) is defined as a system of physical objects (i.e., smart home appliances) that are interconnected for exchanging and collecting information over the Internet. These smart objects are equipped with processing and communication capabilities, and also consists of a locatable Internet protocol address [1]. Industrial IoT (IIoT) is a specific type of IoT, which encompasses of sensors, actuators, and machinery. The objects in IIoT collect and interpret data, and in turn, the collected and analyzed data is used for the real-time intelligent decisions without human intervention. Specifically, in the manufacturing industries, IIoT optimizes assets and production processes by adding connectivity and intelligence to different tools, conveyor belts and shop-floors, and it provides the connected wearables to the working personnel in the factory [2], [3].