Self-Sovereign Identity: Use-cases, Technologies, and Challenges for Industrial IoT

Industrial Internet of Things applications are distributed Cyber-Physical systems with long life-cycles, with strict security requirements, that are being pervasively adopted with the proliferation of Industry 4.0. A fundamental aspect of security, in such applications, is a trustworthy identity to avoid impersonation attacks. Classical approaches for identity management usually rely on some variation of a centralized system, either based in a Public Key Infrastructure or in a central identity database. These solutions have some well-known drawbacks, notably the single point of failure in the central node and the limited scalability. Self-Sovereign Identity is a novel paradigm for digital identity allowing individuals and devices to fully own and manage their digital identities. According to this paradigm, identity artifacts can be stored by their owners and freely presented whenever a transaction requires some proof of identity, without relying on a central entity. This paper provides a review and discussion of the use-cases, technologies, and challenges that Self-Sovereign Identity faces in the context of Industrial Internet of Things’ applications. The potential advantages of using this new paradigm are discussed in detail, together with the key challenges that still need to be addressed.