TrustDedup: Secure data deduplication for IoT based on end–edge–cloud collaboration

In Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled smart societies, the rapid growth of IoT devices has led to a substantial amount of redundant data stored in the cloud, significantly reducing storage efficiency. Although data deduplication effectively addresses redundancy, it introduces security concerns related to data confidentiality and ownership verification, particularly in semi-trusted cloud environments. Current deduplication methods primarily focus on cloud-only models and fail to accommodate the emerging end–edge–cloud collaborative framework driven by edge computing. To address these challenges, this paper proposes TrustDedup, a secure and efficient deduplication scheme that integrates edge–cloud collaboration and blockchain technology. The proposed scheme employs convergent encryption for secure data deduplication, uses blockchain-based smart contracts for transparent ownership verification, and includes a two-tiered deduplication approach to enhance efficiency and mitigate label inconsistency attacks. Security analyses and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed solution effectively improves deduplication efficiency and ensures robust data security in IoT scenarios.