SECURING MACHINE-TO-MACHINE COMMUNICATION IN INDUSTRIAL IOT AND ROBOTIC NETWORKS

ABSTRACT

Industrial M2M communication requires security coordination with three properties jointly unmet by existing systems: (R1) bounded-latency finality (<50 ms), (R2) multi-stakeholder governance preventing unilateral action, and (R3) resilience to intelligent insider non-reporting. This paper derives an architectural specialization of permissioned blockchain that satisfies these requirements through contextual validator eligibility and evidence-embedded transactions. Unlike prior blockchain-IDS integration, our approach embeds governance into consensus rules. We validate on replayed Boston Dynamics Spot traffic with 97.2% accuracy and sub-50 ms coordination latency. A key design insight emerges for permissioned industrial networks, security derives from contextual validation rules rather than computational proof. Mining-free consensus achieves 198% higher throughput, 82% lower latency, and 60% lower power than mining-based alternatives.

Keywords: Blockchain; distributed security; intrusion detection; PoA²; mining-free consensus; alert suppression resilience.