MI3SE: A multi-user index-based searchable symmetric encryption scheme for improving security of data in connected electronic devices

In the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), outdoor electronic devices serve crucial roles across sectors, providing vital data for decision-making. However, their exposure to open outdoor environments makes them vulnerable to unauthorized access, physical theft, or compromise, endangering both the device and its data. Ensuring the security of outdoor devices and their data is thus critical. This study addresses data security in outdoor IIoT devices by supporting the encryption of all IIoT-related data in device memory. Accessing and retrieving this data requires operations on encrypted data. Hence, we introduce a Searchable Symmetric Encryption (SSE) scheme called MI3SE, which ensures each device’s encryption key is unique and valid for a period based on the device’s security sensitivity. Moreover, MI3SE meets key security requirements, including confidentiality, integrity, forward secrecy, and backward secrecy. It is specifically designed to mitigate physical compromise and query pattern analysis through a two-keyword query approach and withstand various attacks, as validated by rigorous security analysis. Comparative evaluations against benchmark schemes underscore the efficacy of MI3SE in terms of both security and performance. Moreover, comprehensive non-mathematical security analysis and simulation experiments affirm the enhanced accuracy and efficacy of MI3SE in securing sensitive data stored in outdoor IIoT devices.