A Hybrid Approach to Secure RFID/Sensor Based SCM Systems

Abstract: The use of RFID (Radio FrequencyIdentification) technology can be employed for not onlyreducing company management costs but also to track eachcontainer, pallet, case, product being manufactured,shipped and sold, uniquely to increase more visibility andaccountability in the supply chain.They connect supply chain stakeholders (i.e., suppliers, manufacturers, wholesalers/distributors, retailers and customers) and allow them to exchange data and product information. We outline a RFID model for the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Management System as a case study to provide accurate, real-time information on products as they move to the value chain and by automating related business processes. Despite these potential benefits, security issues are the key factor in the deployment of a RFID-enabled system in the global supply chain. This paper proposes a hybrid approach to secure RFID transmission in Supply Chain Management (SCM) systems using modified Wired Equivalent Encryption (WEP) and Rivest, Shamir and Adleman (RSA) cryptosystem. The proposed system also addresses the common loophole of WEP key algorithm and uses a hybrid encryption based approach to solve the problem.