Zero trust-driven access control delegation using blockchain
Rahma Bintey Mufiz Mukta, Shantanu Pal, Kowshik Chowdhury, Michael Hitchens, Hye-Young Paik, Salil S. Kanhere · Blockchain Research and Applications · 2025
As digital ecosystems become more complex with decentralized technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain, traditional access control models fail to meet the security needs of dynamic, high-risk environments. The need for dynamic, fine-grained access control mechanisms has become critical, particularly in environments where trust must be continuously evaluated, and access decisions must adapt to real-time conditions. Traditional models often rely on static identity management and centralized trust assumptions, which are inadequate for modern, decentralized, and highly dynamic environments such as IoT ecosystems. Consequently, existing solutions lack fine-grained identity management, flexible delegation, and continuous trust evaluation, highlighting the need for a more robust, adaptive, and decentralized access control architecture. To address these gaps, this paper presents a novel access control architecture that integrates self-sovereign identity (SSI) and decentralized identifier (DID)-based access control with zero trust principles, enhanced by a flexible capability-based access control (CapBAC) approach. Leveraging SSI and DID allows entities to manage their identities without relying on a central authority, aligning with zero-trust principles. The integration of CapBAC ensures flexible, context-aware, and attribute-based access control, where access rights are dynamically granted based on the requester's capabilities. This enables fine-grained delegation of access rights, allowing trusted entities to delegate specific privileges to others without compromising overall security. Continuous trust evaluation is employed to assess the authenticity of access requests, mitigating the risks posed by compromised devices or users. The proposed architecture also incorporates blockchain technology to ensure transparent, immutable, and secure management of access logs, providing traceability and accountability for all access events. We demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of this solution through performance evaluations and comparisons with existing access control schemes, showing its superior security, scalability, and adaptability in real-world scenarios. Our work demonstrates a comprehensive, decentralized, and scalable solution for secure access control delegation using zero trust-driven principles.