This paper considers the domain of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) infrastructures and the recurring need for collaboration across teams and stakeholders by means of remote access. The paper describes a secure solution beyond the traditional perimeter-based security approach, which consists of an architecture that supports multi-level authorization to achieve fine-grained access control, better scalability, and maintainability. An implementation of the proposed solution, using open-source technologies, is also discussed and covers the protection of both the network and edge domains of a complex IIoT infrastructure. Finally, the paper presents a risk-driven and model-based process that is designed to support the migration of existing infrastructures to the solution architecture. The approach is validated, taking as a reference two relevant scenarios for the aerospace industry.

The accurate tracking of every production step and related outcome in a supply chain is a stringent requirement in safety-critical sectors such as civil aviation. In such a framework, trusted traceability and accountability can be reliably and securely managed by means of blockchain-based solutions. Unfortunately, blockchain cannot guarantee the provenance and accuracy of the stored information. To overcome such a limitation, this paper proposes a secure solution to strongly rely on the tracking information of the physical assets in the supply chain. The proposed solution exploits Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) to provide required cryptographic primitives through a Near-Field Communication (NFC) connection. In our approach, each transfer of the assets is authenticated, verified, and recorded in the blockchain through the HSM. Transaction entries are signed, thus providing a guarantee of ownership and authenticity. The proposed infrastructure has been subject of an exhaustive security analysis and proved resilient against counterfeiting attempts, stakeholder repudiations, and misleading information.

Collaborative manufacturing is a key enabler of Industry 4.0 that requires secure data sharing among multiple parties. However, intercompany data-sharing raises important privacy and security concerns, particularly given intellectual property and business-sensitive information collected by many devices. In this paper, we propose a solution that combines four technologies to address these challenges: Attribute-Based Encryption for data access control, blockchain for data integrity and non-repudiation, Hardware Security Modules for authenticity, and the Interplanetary File System for data scalability. We also use OpenID for dynamic client identification and propose a new method for user revocation in Attribute-Based Encryption. Our evaluation shows that the solution can scale up to 2,000,000 clients while maintaining all security guarantees.