IoT-Enabled Cloud Storage Data Access Control Model Based on Blockchain Technology

Abstract

The convergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud storage has created data ecosystems in which billions of heterogeneous devices generate, upload and consume sensitive data through third-party infrastructure. Conventional access control, which relies on a trusted central authority, is increasingly mismatched with this setting: it introduces single points of failure, offers limited auditability, and scales poorly across administrative domains. Blockchain technology has therefore emerged as a promising foundation for decentralized, tamper-evident and auditable access control. This review systematically examines 39 peer-reviewed studies published between 2023 and mid-2025 on blockchain-based data access control for IoT-enabled cloud storage. It first consolidates the background on access control models, blockchain primitives and the underlying threat model. It then proposes a six-dimensional taxonomy covering crypto-enforced access control, smart-contract policy enforcement, identity and authentication, zero-trust and AI-assisted control, storage-layer services, and consensus and scalability. A structured comparison of representative schemes reveals a clear convergence towards hybrid designs that combine attribute-based encryption, permissioned ledgers and off-chain storage such as the InterPlanetary File System, while also exposing heterogeneous and rarely reproducible evaluations. Building on these findings, the review synthesizes a layered reference architecture, termed CSDA-BT (Cloud Storage Data Access control based on Blockchain Technology), that maps the surveyed techniques onto an end-to-end workflow with a self-adaptive policy loop. Finally, it identifies open challenges, including scalability and latency, revocation cost, regulatory compliance with immutable ledgers, smart-contract security, post-quantum readiness and the lack of standardized benchmarks, and outlines research directions for each. The review is intended as a practical roadmap for researchers and cloud service providers designing secure, scalable and cost-effective IoT data platforms.