Advancements in distributed ledger technology for Internet of Things

Internet of Things (IoT) is paving the way for different kinds of devices to be connected and properly communicated at a mass scale. However, conventional mechanisms used to sustain security and privacy cannot be directly applied to IoT whose topology is increasingly becoming decentralized. Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) on the other hand comprise varying forms of decentralized data structures that provide immutability through cryptographically linking blocks of data. To be able to build reliable, autonomous and trusted IoT platforms, DLT has the potential to provide security, privacy and decentralized operation while adhering to the limitations of IoT devices. The marriage of IoT and DLT technology is not very recent. In fact many projects have been focusing on this interesting combination to address the challenges of smart cities, smart grids, internet of everything and other decentralized applications, most based on blockchain structures. In this special issue, the focus is on the new and broader technical problems associated with the DLT-based security and backend platform solutions for IoT devices and applications.WOS:000695693900012Scopus - Affiliation ID: 60105072Science Citation Index ExpandedArticleUluslararası işbirliği ile yapılan - EVETMart2020YÖK - 2019-2

Personal data broker instead of blockchain for students’ data privacy assurance

Data logs about learning activities are being recorded at a growing pace due to the adoption and evolution of educational technologies (Edtech). Data analytics has entered the field of education under the name of learning analytics. Data analytics can provide insights that can be used to enhance learning activities for educational stakeholders, as well as helping online learning applications providers to enhance their services. However, despite the goodwill in the use of Edtech, some service providers use it as a means to collect private data about the students for their own interests and benefits. This is showcased in recent cases seen in media of bad use of students’ personal information. This growth in cases is due to the recent tightening in data privacy regulations, especially in the EU. The students or their parents should be the owners of the information about them and their learning activities online. Thus they should have the right tools to control how their information is accessed and for what purposes. Currently, there is no technological solution to prevent leaks or the misuse of data about the students or their activity. It seems appropriate to try to solve it from an automation technology perspective. In this paper, we consider the use of Blockchain technologies as a possible basis for a solution to this problem. Our analysis indicates that the Blockchain is not a suitable solution. Finally, we propose a cloud-based solution with a central personal point of management that we have called Personal Data Broker.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Link Before You Share: Managing Privacy Policies through Blockchain

With the advent of numerous online content providers, utilities and applications, each with their own specific version of privacy policies and its associated overhead, it is becoming increasingly difficult for concerned users to manage and track the confidential information that they share with the providers. Users consent to providers to gather and share their Personally Identifiable Information (PII). We have developed a novel framework to automatically track details about how a users' PII data is stored, used and shared by the provider. We have integrated our Data Privacy ontology with the properties of blockchain, to develop an automated access control and audit mechanism that enforces users' data privacy policies when sharing their data across third parties. We have also validated this framework by implementing a working system LinkShare. In this paper, we describe our framework on detail along with the LinkShare system. Our approach can be adopted by Big Data users to automatically apply their privacy policy on data operations and track the flow of that data across various stakeholders.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, Published in: 4th International Workshop on Privacy and Security of Big Data (PSBD 2017) in conjunction with 2017 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (IEEE BigData 2017) December 14, 2017, Boston, MA, US