The Isle of Man government wants to get venture capitalists (VCs) interested in IoT again by securing devices using Blockchain.
In August, the Isle of Man announced that it would test Blockchain technology to see if it can prevent IoT devices from compromise by hackers. It would do this by assigning unique identities to physical items to affirm authenticity.
Speaking to Internet of Business, Brian Donegan, head of operations of fintech and development at Isle of Man government, explained that although the Isle of Man is known for trialing new technologies, it was reluctant to go into the IoT space unless it had an idea that could add some value to end users.
“We realized that VCs were running away from IoT when [IoT devices] were found to be hackable – so we wanted to take the IoT hackability challenge and come up with a solution using Blockchain,” he said.
The use case, which is to be published in the next few months, is based around combining mesh networks with Blockchain technology. Currently, IoT networks are centralized, but Blockchain is decentralized which would give IoT devices an extra layer of security.
“By doing that, you will demonstrate that you’ve rendered the data untouchable,” Donegan explained.
He suggested that it was an important step for IoT because everyone isn’t aware of the ‘downside’ of internet-connected devices – that they are vulnerable to hackers.
Related: Blockchain and IoT technologies combine for document authentication
Where Credit is due
The Isle of Man government will work with start-up firm Credits to offer its Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) framework to enable enterprises and public sector organisations to build Blockchains that will establish provenance, authentication and reconciliation. The framework should work with other legacy and Blockchain systems.
The UK government has endorsed the framework by awarding a contract under its G-Cloud 8. The contract is to provide distributed ledger-technology software and cloud-based services to enterprises and public sector bodies.
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Related: IoT Blockchain alliance to deliver security for connected devices