Securing ownership management and transfer of consumer IoT devices with blockchain-based Self Sovereign Identity (SSI)

Abstract

With the power of automation and connectivity, the use of IoT devices is increasing over the last 10-12 years consistently. IoT devices are taking place in our homes beside industries with the capability of collecting datas from the environment, analyzing them, and sharing this datas with the motivation of the automotive world. During this time, IoT devices have shown us the difficulties of user identity management, ownership transfer and security flows beside the light of hope. Here, a better identity management system is the main condition for successful ownership management and transfer systems. Scientists have tried various types of identity management systems and security protections to overcome these issues but mostly failed to make IoT devices user-centric. They have tried to apply blockchain technology to IoT devices to ensure security and gain faith in IoT devices. The distributed ledger technology or blockchain has successfully provided us with a secure data storing decentralized database but failed to make the devices and identity data transaction user-centric. But blockchain still can be the solution here. With the help of blockchain, combined with the decentralized identifiers, verifiable credentials, and distributed ledger, a new identity management system called Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) can win this race. SSI will help IoT devices to gain more trust of the user by making them user-centric with the help of SSI. Besides, it will be the solution for easier ownership management and ownership transfer of these devices.