J Supercomput https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-018-2365-y An automatic RFID reader-to-reader delegation protocol for SCM in cloud computing environment S. Anandhi 1 · R. Anitha 1 · Venkatasamy Sureshkumar 1 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology enables unique identi- fication and tracking of the tag attached to an object. Widespread usage of RFID technologies in supply chain management (SCM) has drawn attention for developing security protocols to protect data stored in the tag. In SCM objects move from one place/department to another, the same RFID readers are not used throughout the supply chain. So, current reader delegates its access right to the new reader. When an object is moved inside the organization, delegation takes place between the readers. Many of the existing delegation protocols use trusted third party (TTP), which is practically difficult to incorporate or requires a keyed hash function/symmetric key encryption to be executed in the RFID tag, whereas tags are computationally intensive. Our work aims to simplify the delegation process by removing the usage of a TTP as well as eliminating reader-to-reader communication which avoids fixing the reader sequence in advance. Also, it preserves the security and privacy requirements for cloud-based applications. The proposed protocol withstands many attacks like tracing attack, tag impersonation attack, reader impersonation attack, and privacy attack. The proposed protocol not only resists the above-mentioned attacks but also achieves mutual authen- tication, anonymity property, and forward/backward secrecy. The proposed protocol is analyzed formally using GNY logic, which ensures that the protocol achieves mutual authentication. Performance analysis is carried out and it shows that our protocol is B S. Anandhi anandhigokul@gmail.com; san.amcs@psgtech.ac.in R. Anitha anitha_nadarajan@mail.psgtech.ac.in Venkatasamy Sureshkumar sand.amcs@psgtech.ac.in 1 Department of Applied Mathematics and Computational Sciences, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore 641004, India 123