1. Basic Description of the Proposal
The research in techniques, protocols and methodologies to implement the collaborative credentials in IoT environments constitute the main objective of the project. As this research topic is inserted within the field of the self-sovereign credentials (SSI) model, it is important to adopt a similar methodology as that used in the recent developments in the field of Blockchain and SSI. This methodology follows these steps: i) use cases definition; ii) identification of technical, normative or legal requirements for the previously defined use cases, clearly specifying the particularities; iii) research focused on the technological solutions for the requirements; iv) validation of solutions in realistic testbeds. We must highlight two essential aspects to understand the scope of the proposal. First, as motivated in the problem statement, it is important to tackle the solution for this problem not only from a technological point of view, but also to consider the legal aspects. For this reason, the research team and the methodology will be adapted to leverage a multidisciplinary approach. Specifically, the research team incorporates a specialist in the legal area with a wide research experience in the cybersecurity field. Regarding the methodology, the multidisciplinary is applied in the first phase of the project, devoted to the development of use cases and requirements.
Second, for the validation of the solutions about collaborative credentials, we plan to implement a testbed consisting of two main parts:
1) A blockchain node to implement the verifiable credentials registry. Here we start from a current collaboration between the research team (see Dr. Margarita Robles CV) and the Alastria consortium, which is a non-profit national consortium focused on leveraging Blockchain technologies, and it is part of the EBSI project. For this reason, in this project we plan to join the European EBSI initiative by implementing an EBSI node (Hyperledger Besu).
2) An IOT testbed for the implementation and validation of the solutions, that is composed of two different parts. First, in order to permit the evaluation of performance in real devices, and detect practical limitations, a set of physical devices (motes and gateways) that allow the implementation of solutions. Second, in order to test the scalability of real IoT scenarios, we plan to use simulation and virtualization.
2. Objectives
We summarize now the objectives of the SICRAC project. The primary objective of the project is:
- Develop solutions for the utilization of collaborative credentials in self-sovereign identity models applied to IoT environments and evaluate their viability and impact.
This primary objective is specified in four secondary objectives:
- Definition of use cases for collaborative credentials in IoT and their associated requirements.
- Design algorithms, techniques and procedures that allow to implement scenarios with collaborative credentials in IoT environments.
- Implementation and validation of solutions.
- Dissemination of results.