BCoT: Securing and Decentralizing Cloud Computing With Blockchain

Decentralizing IoT & Cloud Computing With Blockchain

Ever since the internet was introduced, the world has evolved and progressed at a breakneck speed. The juggernaut of connectivity has transformed the way industries and businesses work today. Moreover, the advent of smart devices has only made the entire world more dynamic, bringing people, technology, and machines closer to one another. The amalgamation of data with emerging technologies altogether has marked the dawn of a new era that is entirely digital and futuristic.

Digital data has started proliferating in multiple forms such as videos, images, documents, music, etc and the existing storage mediums are seeking to optimize storage solutions in order to save the colossal amount of data. To repress this predicament, cloud computing solutions are offering a way to store data and access it seamlessly whenever and wherever required. And to amp up the accessibility, safety, and privacy of data, blockchain technology is fuelling the applications of IoT and cloud computing, leading to the coinage of the term BCoT or Blockchain of Things.

In this blog, we will delve into the core attributes of BCoT, how it can be used to secure and decentralized cloud computing applications & use cases, and what are the future implications that it brings along. Let’s get started.

Blockchain & the Cloud of Things: Integrations and Implications 

Blockchain technology has undoubtedly taken the world by storm. Blockchain with its transparent, decentralized, secure, and transparent nature has surfaced as a disruptive technology for a plethora of next-gen industrial applications. One of the most prominent tech combinations that we are focusing on is the Cloud of Things, enabled by the fusion of cloud computing and the Internet of Things. 

In this context, blockchain technology furnishes intuitive solutions to address the challenges and issues of the Cloud of Things in terms of data privacy, network security, and decentralization. On the other hand, Cloud of Things offers scalability and elasticity functionalities to enhance and boost the efficiency of blockchain operations. Therefore, a novel paradigm of blockchain as well as the Cloud of Things – also reckoned as BCoT, has been regarded as a promising enabler of a wide range of applications and use cases scenarios. 

Need For The Integration of Blockchain and CoT

The conventional CoT networks and infrastructures face challenges of operational difficulties and infectiveness because of the below-mentioned issues:

• The foremost challenge that conventional CoT architectures face is that it primarily relies on centralized communication models like the central cloud, thereby, making the service operations hard to scale whenever IoT networks need expanding to a wide extent.

• The second challenge that CoT encounters is that the most current versions of CoT systems have to trust a cloud service provider – or a third party, for IoT data processing which amplifies the risks of data security and privacy.

• The third big challenge is that centralized network architectures give rise to higher communication latency and costs. They also have higher power consumption for IoT devices because of huge data transmissions. It all together creates hassles in large-scale deployments and integrations of CoT in practical scenarios.

Keeping in view the hurdles experienced by CoT and the benefits blockchain technology offers, it seems promising to integrate the elements of blockchain with CoT so that the challenges and security issues are resolved.

Also Read: An Introduction To Cloud-Native Microservices Development

Applications and Use Cases of Blockchain and CoT Integrations

Smart Healthcare Sector

BCoT has tremendous potential for healthcare applications in terms of smartening and modernizing current procedures and infrastructures. While the healthcare industry essentially comprises medical organizations and institutions, this sector primarily deals with various medical equipment, healthcare-related services, medical insurance, and instruments such as ventilators, etc.

• In this sector, BCoT can furnish effective solutions to critical issues with respect to service efficiency and security.
• With BCoT integration in healthcare, it can generate new smart medical services like CoT-powered health data sharing. It can also build efficient healthcare data sharing ecosystems by reducing the time required for sharing data from patients’ devices to doctors through smart connected devices.
• For instance, the EHRs can be efficaciously processed and stored online with robust blockchain-enabled cloud storage solutions. For monitoring the health of patients, doctors can access their medical information using their mobile devices.

Blockchain services are also proven to be extremely advantageous for solving security issues in the process of medical data sharing. It can overcome these challenges with the use of decentralized data verification of all peer nodes and with the aid of message validation by leveraging a consensus process.

Blockchain-enabled Smart Home Automation

Smart home automation is one of the most sought-after and relevant fields where BCoT can be efficiently deployed. 

• A smart home can be described as a network of interconnected and smart IoT devices that are optimized in accordance with the needs of users. It consists of sensors and detectors that garner info from its surroundings, then store it in the cloud, process the information, and finally perform tasks.
• For instance, fire detection systems consist of temperature sensors that detect if there is any fire around. After sensing, the data is processed in case a fire is detected, a message will be sent to the homeowner, and the installed water sprinkler will automatically start, or the fire alarm will be triggered.

In smart automated homes, blockchain services can be leveraged to boost security by eliminating the data loss risk and increasing data privacy. Blockchain technology can be utilized to construct a decentralized data integrity infrastructure which can be beneficial for guaranteeing the stability and security of the entire system without any need for third parties.

Smart Manufacturing

The smart manufacturing sector is another emerging field where BCoT can extend its contribution. Smart manufacturing is defined as deploying automated machines which can intelligently perform tasks in a much more efficient way.

• This sector is largely based on IoT-enabled technologies, cloud manufacturing, and service-oriented manufacturing.
• In the current scenarios, smart manufacturing is prone to problems such as third-party-based authorization and centralized industrial networks.
• The centralized manufacturing infrastructure leads to lower efficiency, flexibility, scalability, and security.

A possible and feasible solution to these challenges would be to integrate BCoT services which have the potential to implement decentralized architectures and enhance the overall security.

Blockchain-enabled Smart Transportation

In the existing modern age, the transportation sector possesses a lot of possibilities for improvement. With the help of robust cloud computing technologies, fast-improving sensors, and communication systems for transportation systems is being visible. It has a prominent impact on the lives of people such as less time required for goods’ transportation, safety on roads, and efficient travel times.

Smart transportation can be elucidated as an IoT application that is related to vehicular services in transportation systems and integrated architectures of communication technologies. However, it faces issues like security risks that emerge from dynamic vehicle-to-vehicle communication and over-dependence on centralized network bodies. In such cases, blockchain technology can be actively leveraged to architect a trusted, secured, and decentralized ITS infrastructure.

Summing Up

BCoT has shown a reliable and trusted path to building a secure, transparent, decentralized, and privacy-friendly ecosystem where connectivity data and node-to-node communication remain tightly controlled and secured. The Cloud of Things and its integration with blockchain technology stands as a savior for diverse business sectors and industries that are looking to maintain data privacy, decentralization, and accessibility.

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