Holistic Privacy-Preserving Identity Management System for the Internet of Things

Abstract

Security and privacy concerns are becoming an important barrier for large scale adoption and deployment of the Internet of Things. To address this issue, the identity management system defined herein provides a novel holistic and privacy-preserving solution aiming to cope with heterogeneous scenarios that requires both traditional online access control and authentication, along with claim-based approach for M2M (machine to machine) interactions required in IoT. It combines a cryptographic approach for claim-based authentication using the Idemix anonymous credential system, together with classic IdM mechanisms by relying on the FIWARE IdM (Keyrock). This symbiosis endows the IdM system with advanced features such as privacy-preserving, minimal disclosure, zero-knowledge proofs, unlikability, confidentiality, pseudonymity, strong authentication, user consent, and offline M2M transactions. The IdM system has been specially tailored for the Internet of Things bearing in mind the management of both users’ and smart objects’ identity. Moreover, the IdM system has been successfully implemented, deployed, and tested in the scope of SocIoTal European research project.