The Internet of Things (IoT) is “the network of physical objects, devices, vehicles, buildings and other items embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity which allows them to gather and exchange data”. The main feature of IoT is its notable impact on various aspects of the daily life of potential users. Some examples of the possible applications where IoT will play a leading role in the next years include Smart Buildings, healthcare and enhanced learning. There are several challenges that IoT poses to organizations and developers such as security, big-data, heterogeneity, variety and variability, real-time deployment and logging, integration, and many others. The privacy risks of IoT are exacerbated by a lack of fundamental security safeguards in many of the first generation IoT products on the market, for instance, in video surveillance and the cameras which can be considered as “things”. The vulnerability of IoT systems has been exposed in a number of instances including, most notably, ”The Mirai Botnet Attack”, which was on the verge of infecting IoT devices, such as security cameras, and making an attempt to connect and access their data. Another attack, against KerbsOnscecurity.com in 2016, caused damages of approximately $323,000 to IoT device owners in terms of bandwidth consumption and excess energy consumption. Blockchain could address three main concerns in IoT applications including confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Blockchain acts as an immutable (permanent and unalterable), consensus-driven (trust verification), decentralized (networked copies) and transparent public record of data secured using a P2P (peer-to-peer) network along with a number of key security, privacy and compliance elements of the system on the cloud. Although Blockchain could be the solution for addressing several user privacy and reliability challenges, the technology itself can prove rather inefficient due to its high energy consumption and processing overheads, which are undesirable for IoT applications. High energy consumption can lead to system failures, which by default will compromise the system’s reliability, integrity and availability. Security, performance and energy are three critical aspects of IoT applications. Deviations in these three quality attributes may cause a great number of issues for users and applications. This thesis is concerned with finding a balance between the three qualities for Blockchain at runtime by employing DevOps approaches to enable the continuous maintenance of the system, and self-adaptive management systems to allow for the flexible configuration of Blockchain to respond to dynamic and evolving needs.

Mohammadreza Rasolroveicy is a PhD student with a background in the field of Fault Tolerance techniques in cloud computing, E-learning and its various advantages. As a DITA trainee, he is working to further develop his expertise in IoT security and cloud computing. His project focuses on promoting security in IoT applications by integrating Blockchain technology and examining various threats that may confront these applications. He is also investigating DevOps approaches, such as MAPEK-k, to develop automation tools for maintaining performance and reducing energy consumption when applying security frameworks to the system.