The Applications of Blockchain To Cybersecurity

A blockchain is a decentralized public ledger facilitating secure transactions between untrusted network nodes. It has garnered significant recognition for its pivotal role in cryptocurrency systems, where it ensures secure and decentralized transaction records. Over the past decade, blockchain has attracted considerable attention from various industries, as it holds the potential to revolutionize multiple sectors, including cybersecurity. However, this field of study is relatively new, and numerous questions remain unanswered regarding the effectiveness of blockchain in cybersecurity. This research adopted a qualitative research design to investigate the current implementations of blockchain-based security and their applicability in the current cybersecurity context. Additionally, this work explored the mechanisms employed by blockchain to uphold the security triad. Findings indicate that blockchain exhibits substantial potential in addressing existing challenges in cybersecurity, particularly those related to the Internet of Things, data integrity and ownership, and network security. Nonetheless, widespread adoption faces limitations due to technological immaturity, high-cost complexity, and regulatory hurdles. Therefore, utilizing blockchain-based solutions in cybersecurity necessitates a thorough analysis of their applicability to an organization\u27s specific needs, a clear definition of implementation goals, and careful navigation of challenges

Integrating Blockchain for Data Sharing and Collaboration Support in Scientific Ecosystem Platform

Nowadays, scientific experiments are conducted in a collaborative way. In collaborative scientific experiments, aspects such interoperability, privacy and trust in shared data should be considered to allow the reproducibility of the results. A critical aspect associated with a scientific process is its provenance information, which can be defined as the origin or lineage of the data that helps to understand the results of the scientific experiment. Other concern when conducting collaborative experiments, is the confidentiality, considering that only properly authorized personnel can share or view results. In this paper, we propose BlockFlow, a blockchain-based architecture with the aim of bringing reliability to the collaborative research, considering the capture, storage and analysis of provenance data related to a scientific ecosystem platform (E-SECO)

Blockchain Enabled Platforms for the Internet of Things

The Blockchain and the Internet of Things (IoT) have gained a lot of attention in the last few years, since both technologies enable the possibility of creating a more connected and independent world. This combination enables the design of computing systems and cyber-physical environments without the need of centralized trusted entities, giving users the freedom and control of their operations, in a decentralized ledger model. By using storing and logging mechanisms supported by the Blockchain, data is immutable and independently audited, guaranteeing that it is neither modified nor deleted. At the same time, applications can benefit from the reliability and fault-tolerance assumptions provided by the Blockchain in supporting transactions between users and involved devices. In this thesis, it was studied and proposed a generic solution for a Blockchain-enabled IoT software architecture. The proposed solution enables the advantages of using decentralized logging and ledgering, without the interference of central authorities, inherently supported by the base Blockchain reliability, availability and security foundations. These capabilities are envisaged as key-benefits for a new generation of clean-slate approaches for IoT applications with the required scalability criteria. The research conducted in the dissertation work, studied the base software foundations, relevant components and implementation options that enable the identified advantages of using Blockchain components and services, to leverage more scalable and trustable IoT platforms. Our proposed solution aims to provide an architecture that contributes to a more appropriate design for secure and reliable IoT systems. In this trend we propose a better use of edge-based support for local-enabled processing environments supporting IoT devices and users’ interactions, with operations intermediated by proximity hubs acting as gateways to the Blockchain, where the operations are regulated and controlled by verifiable smart-contracts involving data and transactions

Data trust framework using blockchain and smart contracts

Lack of trust is the main barrier preventing more widespread data sharing. The lack of transparent and reliable infrastructure for data sharing prevents many data owners from sharing their data. Data trust is a paradigm that facilitates data sharing by forcing data controllers to be transparent about the process of sharing and reusing data. Blockchain technology has the potential to present the essential properties for creating a practical and secure data trust framework by transforming current auditing practices and automatic enforcement of smart contracts logic without relying on intermediaries to establish trust. Blockchain holds an enormous potential to remove the barriers of traditional centralized applications and propose a distributed and transparent administration by employing the involved parties to maintain consensus on the ledger. Furthermore, smart contracts are a programmable component that provides blockchain with more flexible and powerful capabilities. Recent advances in blockchain platforms toward smart contracts' development have revealed the possibility of implementing blockchain-based applications in various domains, such as health care, supply chain and digital identity. This dissertation investigates the blockchain's potential to present a framework for data trust. It starts with a comprehensive study of smart contracts as the main component of blockchain for developing decentralized data trust. Interrelated, three decentralized applications that address data sharing and access control problems in various fields, including healthcare data sharing, business process, and physical access control system, have been developed and examined. In addition, a general-purpose application based on an attribute-based access control model is proposed that can provide trusted auditability required for data sharing and access control systems and, ultimately, a data trust framework. Besides auditing, the system presents a transparency level that both access requesters (data users) and resource owners (data controllers) can benefit from. The proposed solutions have been validated through a use case of independent digital libraries. It also provides a detailed performance analysis of the system implementation. The performance results have been compared based on different consensus mechanisms and databases, indicating the system's high throughput and low latency. Finally, this dissertation presents an end-to-end data trust framework based on blockchain technology. The proposed framework promotes data trustworthiness by assessing input datasets, effectively managing access control, and presenting data provenance and activity monitoring. A trust assessment model that examines the trustworthiness of input data sets and calculates the trust value is presented. The number of transaction validators is defined adaptively with the trust value. This research provides solutions for both data owners and data users’ by ensuring the trustworthiness and quality of the data at origin and transparent and secure usage of the data at the end. A comprehensive experimental study indicates the presented system effectively handles a large number of transactions with low latency

A Systematic Review on Blockchain in Education: Opportunities and Challenges

This study focuses on bloackchain as an emerging technology regarding its use to restructure the systems and advance education upon quality outcomes. What are the benefits of integrating blockchain in education concerning system reformation and advancement in developing better educational process for all encompassing learning outcomes? With the recent developments of blockchain applications across multiple domains, the education industry seems to be benefited from this technology in considerable degree. Transcripts and certificates play a vital role in individual’s life so it needs to be stored in tamper-proof and long term available ledger. In pursuant to addressing afore stated question, this study bring information regarding what blockchain technology is, how it functions and what its uses if it comes to integrate with education at different levels. This may include reviewing the conceptual/knowledge bases, research and development studies and sources that introduce blcokchain including its features but with special highlight on how it has been integrated in the education sector especially in innovative situation.To this end, this study was designed to provide a systematic review of all the literature focused on decentralized ledger technology. Multiple sources were reviewed following a systematicpattern that allows selection of relevant sources, sort out information being guided by the research question and make final selection of required information that connects with what and how of Blockchain in education. Keywords: Blockchain, Education, Ledgers, Certificate, Decentralized technolog

Application Of Blockchain Technology And Integration Of Differential Privacy: Issues In E-Health Domains

A systematic and comprehensive review of critical applications of Blockchain Technology with Differential Privacy integration lies within privacy and security enhancement. This paper aims to highlight the research issues in the e-Health domain (e.g., EMR) and to review the current research directions in Differential Privacy integration with Blockchain Technology.Firstly, the current state of concerns in the e-Health domain are identified as follows: (a) healthcare information poses a high level of security and privacy concerns due to its sensitivity; (b) due to vulnerabilities surrounding the healthcare system, a data breach is common and poses a risk for attack by an adversary; and (c) the current privacy and security apparatus needs further fortification. Secondly, Blockchain Technology (BT) is one of the approaches to address these privacy and security issues. The alternative solution is the integration of Differential Privacy (DP) with Blockchain Technology. Thirdly, collections of scientific journals and research papers, published between 2015 and 2022, from IEEE, Science Direct, Google Scholar, ACM, and PubMed on the e-Health domain approach are summarized in terms of security and privacy. The methodology uses a systematic mapping study (SMS) to identify and select relevant research papers and academic journals regarding DP and BT. With this understanding of the current privacy issues in EMR, this paper focuses on three categories: (a) e-Health Record Privacy, (b) Real-Time Health Data, and (c) Health Survey Data Protection. In this study, evidence exists to identify inherent issues and technical challenges associated with the integration of Differential Privacy and Blockchain Technology

Models of everywhere revisited: a technological perspective

The concept ‘models of everywhere’ was first introduced in the mid 2000s as a means of reasoning about the environmental science of a place, changing the nature of the underlying modelling process, from one in which general model structures are used to one in which modelling becomes a learning process about specific places, in particular capturing the idiosyncrasies of that place. At one level, this is a straightforward concept, but at another it is a rich multi-dimensional conceptual framework involving the following key dimensions: models of everywhere, models of everything and models at all times, being constantly re-evaluated against the most current evidence. This is a compelling approach with the potential to deal with epistemic uncertainties and nonlinearities. However, the approach has, as yet, not been fully utilised or explored. This paper examines the concept of models of everywhere in the light of recent advances in technology. The paper argues that, when first proposed, technology was a limiting factor but now, with advances in areas such as Internet of Things, cloud computing and data analytics, many of the barriers have been alleviated. Consequently, it is timely to look again at the concept of models of everywhere in practical conditions as part of a trans-disciplinary effort to tackle the remaining research questions. The paper concludes by identifying the key elements of a research agenda that should underpin such experimentation and deployment