Blockchain Authorized Privacy-Preserving Framework Using Edge Computing for the Cloud-Assisted Internet of Medical Things

Recent advancements in mobile cloud computing demand a proper constitution of security components including authentication, authorization, and access control to prevent unauthorized data access. Most computing environments like healthcare handle massive amounts of data generated by the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) like programmable pacemakers and connect a system of supporting infrastructure to manage the delivery of sensitive information over dedicated networks. Despite its development in various end-user applications (e.g., supply chains and logistics), cloud-IoMT device security and data privacy still persist in addressing a few practical challenges demanding further investigation, such as limited security integration and unpatched vulnerabilities. Additionally, centralized user authentication is not applicable to cross-domain application systems like trusted platforms where system capabilities limit their potential growth with connected devices. Thus, this paper proposes a blockchain-authorized privacy-preserving (BAPP) framework using edge computing for the cloud-assisted IoMT. The proposed framework utilizes a hybrid architecture in the edge server to offer centralized authentication. Accordingly, the edge server is associated with a private blockchain network to ensure proper authentication and verification among IoMT devices and to examine metrics namely committed transactions, latency, and throughput. Formal and informal analyses prove the resiliency of the proposed BAPP framework to meet the design requirements of IoMT systems. Above all, experiment analysis shows that the proposed framework achieves better performance in terms of authentication delay (≈ 340.5ms), average throughput (≈ 94.75%), computation time (9.548ms), and average latency (≈ 14.11sec) compared to other authentication schemes.