User-empowered secure privacy-preserving authentication scheme for Digital Twin

Digital Twin (DT) is a revolutionary technology changing how a smart manufacturing industry carries out its day-to-day activities. DT can provide numerous advantages such as real-time synchronised functioning, monitoring and data analysis. However, security and privacy issues in DT have not been thoroughly investigated. This article proposes a user-empowerment-based privacy-preserving authentication protocol for a cloud-based Digital Twin using a Decentralised Identifier (DID) and Verifiable Credential (VC). Here, user empowerment provides full control to users over their identities, and with the help of VC, users can prove their authenticity and preserve their privacy. Although DID has emerged as a promising technology for introducing user empowerment, it suffers from some fundamental problems such as usability and auditability. Here we address all these issues and propose a user-revocation-enabled security solution for the DT. A security analysis of the proposed scheme shows that it is secured against significant security threats. With the help of performance analysis, we prove that the proposed work effectively ensures security and privacy in DT.