Data Inspection and Access Control for 5G Edge Computing-Enabled Internet of Medical Things

The integration of 5 G edge computing in the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) holds the promise for decentralized medical services. However, this advancement raises substantial security concerns, particularly concerning data integrity and access control. The preservation of patient privacy and data security is imperative, given the sensitive nature of medical data. Despite existing research efforts, current solutions exhibit notable drawbacks. In particular, integrity and access control issues are often addressed in isolation, resulting in elevated input/output (I/O) and communication costs. Additionally, many solutions lack the efficiency necessary for deployment on small IoMT devices. This paper introduces a groundbreaking cryptographic solution, named online/offline remote signcryption ( $\text{O}^{2}\text{RSC}$ ), effectively addressing these limitations. $\text{O}^{2}\text{RSC}$ facilitates the simultaneous provision of integrity and access control services, minimizing computational operations in online mode. Our inspection is executed without the need for complete data downloads, significantly reducing communication costs. Our analysis shows that $\text{O}^{2}\text{RSC}$ is secure and cost-effective than current state-of-the-art schemes. Our online/offline technique significantly reduces system overhead. For 200 KB of data, $\text{O}^{2}\text{RSC}$ is over 100 times faster in encryption and decryption, and it reduces ciphertext size by over 100 times. For 200 MB of data, $\text{O}^{2}\text{RSC}$ tags over 100 times faster.