literature review

7/11/2020

( Running head: BLOCKCHAIN ENABLED SECURITY AND DATA INTEGRITY ) ( 1 )

Blockchain-Enabled Security and Data Integrity in Cloud Applications

Introduction

The rapid advancement in digital technology has resulted in new challenges that revolve around data security. When a disaster or attack strikes, any organization's survival depends on offsite data recovery (Malomo et al., 2020). Organizations need to keep their data safe by implementing a strong authentication and cryptography key vaulting approach. Finding a provider that can provide secure and resilient cybersecurity solutions that will protect offsite data for businesses and organizations can be challenging. Numerous studies have demonstrated the impact of cyber-attack losses on the organization; they would potentially lead to huge disruptions and massive losses and damages (Malomo et al. 2020). The cloud-based attacks have been going up in recent years; the attackers are taking advantage of poor security practices and cloud users' vulnerabilities and service providers (Christidis et al., 2016). As cloud computing services increase, a vast number of security issues and risks are presented. Such attacks call into question the different security measures and solutions that are in place to offer protection even as attackers continue to take advantage of those weaknesses. Blockchain cloud computing has been fronted as a feasible solution and considered a framework that can be applied to enhance offsite digital assets (Christidis et al., 2016).

( BLOCKCHAIN ENABLED SECURITY AND DATA INTEGRITY ) ( 10 )

Literature Review

Introduction to Blockchain

Blockchain is one of the fastest-growing new technology. This research aims at investigating the potentials and possibilities that blockchain technology will bring into life. The increased demand for data and information in the business environment has necessitated a more secure and seamless technology of sharing and storing data. Technology presents solutions in line with modern-day challenges presented by the emerging and growing threat presented by cybersecurity (Brodkin, 2008). Even if they exist, other technologies that can offer the same services as blockchain technology, technology has an edge in the issues of enabled security and data integrity in cloud environments and applications. In line with this, advanced research is in progress to establish the technology's full potential and capacity. In general, as the technology is new, the available literature is not as extensive as one could have expected (Natoli et al., 2016).

However, the technology itself is already in use in multiple areas, such as in Bitcoin transactions.

Blockchain has come across as one of the leading if not the leading technology, amongst other technological advancements and developments such as cloud computing. This paper looks at and questions both the possibilities and the potential of blockchain technology if used properly.

The recent surge in demand for information and data within the business environment has brought about the dire need for far better, seamless, and safer technologies to store and disseminate data and information. Currently, technology has brought about varied solutions to the modern-day challenges that have been presented by the upcoming threats that are presented by cybersecurity. It is despite other technologies that seemingly offer the same service as blockchain tech does. Here,

technology is tasked with dealing with data integrity and security challenges within the various cloud environments alongside their numerous applications (Brodkin, 2008).

Introduction to Cloud Computing

Cloud computing represents a wide range of cloud computing services that help individuals and organizations choose how, where, and when to use cloud computing. It offers various solutions like software as a service (SaaS), remote desktop session host (RDSH), platform as a service (PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (IaaS), among others. Cloud computing has many benefits (Müller et al., 2015). For example, it reduces operational costs; in recent years, cloud technologies have also become a basis for business innovation and new business models. More organizations are switching to cloud solutions. It is estimated that close to 77 percent of all enterprises use cloud services to some degree (Müller et al., 2015). Such adoption provides them with advantages such as better networking, real-time interaction. It provides the convenience of access to mature solutions made available on such platforms (Smirnova et al., 2020). Such advantages provide the IT teams with greater flexibility and agility, enabling them to be more responsive and efficient.

History of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is classified into two models as a service model and the deployment model. The service model is a service-oriented architecture provided as a service by an entity or organization. The different services listed earlier include infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, software as a service, mobile backend as a Service, function as a service, and serverless computing. The deployment model categories are private cloud, public cloud, and hybrid cloud (Christidis et al., 2016). A public cloud deployment supports all the users who want to use the

computing resource. In contrast, a private cloud is dedicated to a specific organization. The hybrid cloud uses an interconnected infrastructure for both private and public clouds.

It started in the early 1990s where IBM tried to put a set of mainframes as a datacenter.

Early 1990's, the concept of Remote Job Entry (RJE) and time-sharing is introduced, and IBM was the key player. IBM used its mainframes as a concept data center to write the code and handover to the operators (Hu, 2015). They started using the cloud symbol as the central connection point to the servers connected to the network infrastructure.

In the 2000s, Amazon entered the market with a simple concept called Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2). Their main idea was to share the computing resources virtually with the internal team. In 2006 Amazon started it as part of its subsidiary called Amazon Web Services and was popularly known as AWS (Hu, 2015).

In 2008 Internet Search Engine giant Google release a similar virtual compute resource called Google App Engine. After 2008 the IT firms started switching to use these cloud resources rather than using their hardware.

In 2010 Microsoft entered into the competition with its cloud solution called Microsoft Azure. Moreover, many other companies, like Rackspace, IBM, and Oracle, also started their cloud computing products.

Cloud Computing Benefits

More and more organizations are adopting cloud solutions like Google Docs, SalesForce.com, and Office 365 to their daily operations. Research has shown that around 77 percent of all enterprises use one cloud service to a certain extent (Müller et al., 2015). The service

provided through cloud computing provides enterprises with better capabilities. For example, the platform as a service (PaaS) can be used in renting computing infrastructure (Sether, 2016).

Individuals and organizations can rent or subscribe to cloud computing infrastructure for different applications accessed via the internet. The software as a service (SaaS) allows the user to rent software from a cloud computing vendor at an affordable cost instead of buying it at a high cost to own and manage it (Sether, 2016). Vendors provide the service as a managed solution that makes it affordable and reduces maintenance costs.

There is a developing pattern in utilizing cloud environments for ever-developing storage and data processing needs. In any case, receiving a cloud computing worldview may have positive just as negative consequences for service shoppers' data security. Other significant security issues exist in current cloud computing environments (Christidis et al., 2016). After examining the security mechanisms that significant cloud service providers authorized, a risk analysis approach can be utilized by a forthcoming cloud service for breaking down the data security risks before placing his confidential data into a cloud computing environment.

Risks Associated with Cloud Computing

As much as cloud computing is overwhelmed by advantages, it also poses a certain degree of danger and disadvantages to its users. Firstly, cloud computing poses a risk of company cloud resources being compromised as the API's are accessed via the web. These are the gateways used by clients to interact with cloud services. If security is not configured correctly, they may be compromised by hackers. Secondly, moving to the cloud increases the complexity of operations in the IT team. They ought to have the skill level and capacity to operate and maintain data migration from local servers to the cloud. This kind of complexity introduces new forms of risks such as lack

of proper implementation methods and a lack of knowledge on policies. Abuse of authorized access is another common form of risk. An example of this is an IT administrator downloading clients' files to use for his gain (Boixo et al., 2019).

According to the big analyst firm Gartner (2020), there are seven significant risks fraught with cloud computing. These risks are associated with any cloud vendor. Privileged user access, Regulatory compliance, Data location, Data segregation, Recovery, Investigative support, and Long-term viability are the top seven risks that users often overlook.

Cloud computing and Blockchain technologies

Cloud computing is best described as the hands-on availability of various computing resources by an individual over the internet upon demand. This technology's beauty is that the individual bypasses the need to access the same computing power by signing into the internet and does not mingle with software and hardware. It is ingenious to most organizations as it assists them in minimizing the wastages and unnecessary organizational costs. Cloud computing is evolving at a high rate. It has proved to be far more comfortable and faster as there is improved manageability. The tech requires very little maintenance. The above has made the tech advantageous. It assures the workplace's further acceleration as the resources are rapidly adjusted concerning the various fluctuations (Natoli et al., 2016).

Blockchain technology has come across as a disruptive technology because of its nature as being much decentralized, transparent, and very secure. Its development has resulted in the cloud of things resulting from integrating both the internet and cloud computing technology. Here, blockchain tech has issued various innovative solutions concerning the limitation of the cloud of things by decentralization, data privacy, and network security. The blockchain technology's

efficiency is brought about by the cloud of elasticity and scalability functionality. The integration of both the cloud of things and the blockchain technology has resulted in data security robustness.

The combination of cloud and blockchain technology has provided crucial solutions for implementation and application in various fields like the smart industry, upcoming intelligent cities, smart medical care, and even innovative, smart transportation sectors (Tharani et al., 2020). For example, blockchain allows for a transaction to be made in the absence of an intermediary. It can be applied in a host of financial services like online payment, remittance, or digital assets. It can also be applied in the Internet of Things, security services, and public services in various ways. That is possible because the fields take advantage of blockchain capabilities like being immutable, meaning that it cannot be tampered with once it is packed into the blockchain. Given that it is distributed, it avoids a single point of failure situation.

As the argument above ascertains, yes, integrating both these two technologies is tech's future. It is developing into a solution of eradicating the need for centralized computer models. The various advantages of integrating both blockchain and cloud computing tech leverage the blockchain technology alone provide individuals with data protection resources from notorious computer hackers. It reduces fraudulent occurrences and cases alongside the probability of compromising data and even stealing the same. Then it ascertains the use of blockchain technology as it is currently the most secure technology of the pair; because of its decentralization feature, data copies are usually in the user's hands, maintaining their database's safety. The data and information in blockchain tech are not centralized because of the decentralized feature. The data and information are alternatively stored on a node; this is the computer network tasked with verifying the various on-going transactions in the organization (Kantarci et al., 2015). The integration of both the blockchain and cloud computing technologies will, in the future, provide the ideal

organizational solutions to their respective challenges. Together with their similarities, the differences in both these technologies bring an efficient, ever-developing, and evolving solution to both data integrity and security.

Blockchain as Disruptive Technology

In recent years there have been some misconceptions about Blockchain as Bitcoin, and it is only used for cryptocurrencies. Many organizations felt the blockchain disruptive technology and started experimenting with this Ledger technology upon research. Some of the organizations to experiment with blockchain technology are Starbucks, PepsiCo, Etc. These retail operations and sales sector organizations experienced profits and improved efficiency by reducing efforts and time. Thus, blockchain can have a massive impact on the economy in many sectors.

Blockchain is a reasonably new technology that has presented many potentials. This new technology materialized during 2009 as a public ledger of Bitcoin transactions (Sharma et al., 2019). Blockchain technology is getting applications within an extensive range of fields, smart contracts, digital assets and stocks, record keeping, cloud storage, ID systems, and ridesharing, among others. This new technology is getting the globe by storm. Through its regionalized, apparent, and safe form, blockchain has materialized as a disorderly technology for the subsequent generation of various industrialized appliances. One of its applications is in cloud computing facilitated through cloud computing. Within this setting, blockchain offers innovative solutions to deal with the Cloud of Things' challenges regarding data privacy and network safety, decentralization to enhance blockchain operations' effectiveness.

Recent findings in blockchain's application are how Ledger technology can improve efficiency other than the financial sector. How can we improve the consumer device or consumer

usage application? How can this disrupt the transportation sector? What impact and advantages of this system can bring over the traditional financial system? This way, many questions, and concerns are arising with the evolution of this technology. One of the critical developments in citizen engagement could be voting (Sangita et al., 2015). Voting is the fundamental right of every citizen. Every individual will try to cast their vote or make use of it. In general, this voting procedure happens manually. It means one has to go to a designated place, also called a polling booth. The citizens use the ballot paper or the electronic voting machine, which prints the ballot paper. There is much scope for abusing this system. Blockchain voting could eliminate these problems. The voters are provided with tokens or coins in the digital wallet. Then they can send the token or coin to their chosen representative. Thus, voting is recorded as a transaction, and it cannot tamper (Natoli et al., 2016). It can help provide the cryptographic proof-of-work system that can prove the integrity of the election data.

Blockchain technology is not ready to be implemented in a short time. Since each country differs in currencies and security policies, it would be susceptible to capacity problems, system failures, unanticipated bugs, and technically unsophisticated users. The second problem is energy consumption. Blockchain technology uses hashing and proof-of-work concept by utilizing miners in the network. The miners need high computation power, which results in the consumption of more energy. The third challenge is governance, where governments will restrain themselves. The incentives for the miners are inadequate to maintain infrastructure and collaboration. There will be several other forces that try to control the network. Another challenge is blockchain, a job killer since it is a platform for radical automation (Natoli et al., 2016). Blockchain may be resistant to centralization and control. However, political or economic rewards are significant enough to capture it by the powerful forces.

Businesses across the globe have started integrated blockchain technology into their systems. It results in a range of benefits in the business model, especially with cloud computing and significant data growth. After a transaction is made and verified, the transaction is stored in a block together with an infinite number of other transactions and packaged with the user's information (Sharma et al., 2019). The task of verifying the transactions is done by a network of computers rather than a human being. After verification, the transaction is flagged with a green light and stored in a block together with other verified transactions. After that, the block is given a unique hash and then added to the Blockchain (Sharma et al., 2019).

Blockchain technology is currently being tested in different work cultures to experiment with the benefits and limitations and not have it. Blockchain has gained popularity fast because it has revolutionized the way transactions are made. Typically, the time taken to complete transactions is usually long and is expensive as well. However, blockchain does not need third-party facilitators to process transactions, thus making the process faster.

The technology behind the blockchain relies on the combination of three technologies:

· Cryptographic keys are two keys, namely the private and public keys, that help perform successful transactions among two parties by generating secure digital signatures.

· It is a peer-to-peer network containing a shared ledger. The ledger securely stores transaction-related information for each individual (Boixo et al., 2019).

· A means of computing - This is a way of storing and recording transactions and network records.

Security Impacts of Hackers

Blockchain technology is one of the best tools currently available to protect data from hackers. It prevents impending fraud and reduces the possibility of data being compromised or stolen. For hackers to access or destroy a blockchain, they will have to destroy every user's computer in the global network. In case of any interference, the undamaged computers will keep functioning to authenticate and store a record of all information on the network unless a hacker simultaneously depletes the whole network. The impossibility of bringing down an entire network increases with the number of users on a particular network. Therefore, large blockchain networks have a lower risk of being hacked due to their complexity. The intricate configuration gives blockchain technology the capability to offer security to the information stored and shared online (Kantarci et al., 2015).

Implementing Blockchain for Data Security

Rapid developments in digital technology have brought about new risks around data security. Blockchain provides secure data authentication and essential cryptography vaulting techniques. It refers to blockchain capabilities that are naturally encrypted, making it possible to provide proper validation. Blockchain technology has proven to be strong enough to address how to secure data and avert mischievous cyber-attacks. Blockchain technology motivates its users to re-design and reformulate their data security concerns compared to other traditional methods (Tharani et al., 2020). Blockchain is revolutionary and has found applications in different fields such as finance, healthcare, and sports. The tremendous increase in its use can be attributed to the advantages and capabilities that blockchain provides. For example, the initially required applications to be run through a trusted intermediary can be operated separately without a central authority but still achieve the same functionality with the same certainty. Given that there is no need for trusted intermediaries, there is faster reconciliation between parties.

Improvements and Advantages of Blockchain Technology

Blockchain technology operates on a distributed ledger technology. A distributed ledger means that it disintegrates large amounts of data into smaller parts and distributes them across a whole network of computers. Therefore, it does not have a central control center, which helps secure data (Smirnova et al., 2020). The technology also checks its data across the computer networks and validate the information regularly with each other. The blockchain technology also provides a decentralized network of the database, which is very transparent. It also offers encryption and validation procedures to protect user data.

Data Integrity Issues

Data integrity is defined as the accuracy and validity of data in its existence. According to James, compromised data does not benefit companies because of vital information loss (Zafar et al., 2017). For fear of losing information, companies focus on maintaining data integrity as a solution to other issues. Data can be interfered with in various ways. Therefore, enterprises should ensure that when they transfer data, it is intact and undistorted. In this case, validation procedures and checking methods are kept abreast of data integrity.

According to computer experts, data integrity is essential for various reasons. First, valid and accurate data eases search-ability, recoverability, traceability, and connectivity. Data integrity enables stability and performance in the process of boosting maintainability and reusability. Data can be compromised, resulting in various issues.

For one, data integrity can bear the issue of bugs, hacking, viruses, and other cyber threats.

When this category of problems attacks company data, essential information is lost or stolen by unknown people. Besides viruses, data integrity can experience transfer errors due to the

unintended changes or information interfered with during transfer. Another issue is the human errors that can be malicious or unintentional by individuals. Mostly, human error compromises physical machines and hardware, such as a disk crash. If companies cannot be keen on handling data, privacy issues can also take advantage and compromise everything.

Data Privacy Issues

Data privacy is a section of data security that ensures proper handling of information at par with its regulatory obligations (Liu et al., 2015). Although data integrity and privacy are often used interchangeably, they mean different. Hence, while data security safeguards data from hackers' interference, data privacy controls how information is gathered and shared. Data privacy cannot be far from the reasons why data integrity is essential.

First, organizations request data from associates to directly link with the consumers on the ground. As such, it helps build a better relationship healthy for the company. Therefore, keeping confidential the same information even benefits the enterprises. Secondly, data privacy is an entitled right of an individual, and thus it is free from uninvited surveillance. Gloria suggests that keeping safe and silent one's credentials is critical while in contemporary society.

Analysts have studied data privacy issues and came up with several (Zafar et al., 2017). One of the problems found was leaking confidential data to third parties. Secondly, she listed the illegal gathering of data and assumption regulatory restrictions such as CCPA and GLBA as related issues of the subject. In her argument, Maggie confirms that blockchain was the only remedy to both integrity and privacy matters.

Blockchain Address on Data Privacy and Integrity Issue

It is recommended that when using blockchains, parties should first assume that they write every data into the blockchains to be easily managed (Crosby et al., 2016). However, copying

every data into the blockchains to solve integrity issues is costly and slow at the same time. Therefore, to address the integrity problem, experts recommend keeping the data on the chain and the encrypted data or taking alternative options as follows.

First, save a hash of data straight onto the un-permission blockchain in the Bitcoin or Ethereum. Equally, a member can store a hash of data onto a personalized blockchain. The last option that one may consider is utilizing data anchoring software to present data into blockchains. Through these options, data integrity can be maintained hence safeguarding information. This consideration is preferable because it makes data visible everywhere on the blockchain.

Some researchers hint that blockchains can no longer solve volatile privacy issues (Crosby et al., 2016). However, in the case that blockchains can be used, experts suggest that they will assist in replacing usernames and passwords to manage individual information. On that note, Samuel and Jonte claim that blockchains will help track and store every confidential data because of its immutable nature.

IoT Devices Used at Home

The internet of things, commonly referred to as IoT, comprises digital devices, computing gadgets, animals, and objects uniquely designed with identifiers. These identifiers have the potential to transfer data through a network without either human-to-human or human-to-machine coordination (Marin et al., 2015). Manuel also lists various IoT devices used in homes. Some of the standard IoT machines used at home include the nest cam indoor camera, smart coffee-maker, SmartMat intelligent yoga mart, TrackR bravo tracking device, Linquet Bluetooth tracking sensor, Etc.

Data Storage

The IoT devices are overwhelmingly outnumbering the number of people. Equally, through their number, there has been more data that comes with challenges. Specialists suggest that out of IoT devices, there come amicably large files, images, and videos that cannot be singly stored (Marin et al., 2015). Thus from their nature, Marin and colleagues recommend the use of zips to store the IoT data. Unlike other small files, IoT documents can be compiled and zipped for easy storage. They argue that when these files are compressed, it becomes easy to store and send them to individuals. After compressing such data, the cloud can now accept the information for safe storage.

Compromising IoT Data

Just like any data, IoT data can also be compromised. Anything negative is possible once the data is susceptible to the public Internet (Xiao et al., 2018). Therefore, at exposure, IoT data can be stolen by unknown people or even distorted. Also, exposed viruses or malicious programs, or hackers can attack IoT data. Usually, the hacked data end up being lost, never to be recovered again. When individuals fear for their data safety, experts recommend using the VPN to protect the data when it is passed from one device to the other. That way, malicious people cannot access the information for interference.

The Uniqueness of Blockchain Technology

Blockchain can be defined as a list of growing records called blocks of data. It is resistant to modifications by design. Since it is a distributed ledger, it is decentralized, and no single entity has complete control of it. Several unique and outstanding features make blockchain technology a success (Christidis, 2016). There are quite a several unique and outstanding features that make

blockchain technology a success. Blockchain is a secure means of managing transactions. It has a decentralized feature meaning the copies of data are in the user's hands, and the database remains safe. It uses cryptography to cipher and to decipher transactional data throughout the process (Sangita et al., 2015). Since blockchain is decentralized, there is not a central location for data storage. Data is stored in computers on a network called nodes, responsible for verifying the transactions.

The Relation between Cloud Computing and Blockchain

Blockchain has emerged as a disruptive technology due to its transparent, decentralized, and secure nature. It has created a Cloud of Things built by combining cloud computing and the Internet of Things. In this case, blockchain technology has provided innovative solutions to solve the Cloud of Things limitation through decentralization, network security, and data privacy (Christidis, 2016). In contrast, the Cloud of Things provides elasticity and scalability functionalities to enhance blockchain technology's efficiency. Therefore, the integration of blockchain into the cloud of things has enabled robust data security. Blockchain with cloud technology has found applications in different fields such as smart cities, smart industry, smart transportation, and smart healthcare (Natoli et al., 2016). Integrating blockchain in cloud technology is the future direction to replacing centralized computing models.

Cloud Computing Model

The security layers in a cloud computing model are the endpoint layer, the private network layer, the virtual datacenter layer, the cipher space cloud-services layer, and the internet. The endpoint layer restricts access to protect data in use. Also, it secures software patches. The private network layer protects data in transit and isolates both database servers and web applications. The

virtual data center layer uses firewalls and IDS to protect a data center and isolated virtual data center environments (Smirnova et al., 2020). The cipher space cloud-services layer protects the data center from malicious internet content and ensures that datacenter regulations are followed. On the internet, threats devices such as mobile phones and laptops are trying to read and write information to the servers.

Servers Remote Location

As the servers in cloud computing are remote, the risk of hardware failure is eliminated.

Employees of cloud computing companies such as Azure actively monitor the data centers' hardware to ensure the servers' uptime. Also, cloud computing offers disaster recovery and backups strategies for data. If one data center fails, the workload is transferred to another datacenter without affecting organizational data (Tharani et al., 2020).

CIA Triad Model

The CIA Triad is a triangular-shaped model designed to guide an organization in designing policies for information. The first element in the triad is confidentiality. This aspect allows companies to undertake measures that prevent sensitive information from reaching the wrong people. A typical blockchain transaction is arranged into blocks aligned in a blockchain that links each new block. The data elements in a blockchain are not stored in a central location but done across the blockchain networks, ensuring the security of data elements stored. A CIA triad employs the conventional security approach that emphasizes implementing the three main principles: confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The blockchain leans more towards the integrity and availability of the information that is inside. As a result of the decentralized nature, the data remains transparent to everyone that shares the data elements.

Training needs to be done on password-related best practices and data categorization and encryption to instill this measure. Integrity relates to data accuracy and consistency throughout its life cycle (Kantarci et al., 2015). To ensure data integrity, an organization may use access controls to prevent users from modifying data they are not authorized to perform. They may use version control to track the changes that have been made on a document over some time. Availability refers to having data available to all authorized personnel at any given time. It can be ensured by maintaining hardware and performing frequent software updates. Occurrences such as redundancy and bottlenecks may heavily impact an organization (Information security, 2020).

Blockchain Protection

Ultimately, blockchains can be used to protect the IoT data from any danger. According to experts, data in a blockchain is kept on multiple nodes worldwide, filling the loopholes failing.

Therefore, nodes should approve and verify the required information and data (Xiao et al., 2018). Secondly, most blockchains are public and visible. This characteristic implies that everyone across the networks can see them. In the same line, history can be tracked, transactions can be seen, and the block is identified. However, if one needs the actual data, they must have a private key to access the content. This request ensures that there is transparency for all online company operations. Specialists embrace blockchain storage because once the information is stored, it is impossible to compromise it (Xiao et al., 2018). Finally, blockchains use improved encryption algorithms to protect information making it confidential. Usually, this process applies to financial operations that do not bear any risks with them. Thus by using the blockchain structures, IoT devices can receive and pass information in a similar way; economic operation only allows secure communication between two sides.

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