Blockchain Adoption for Monitoring and Management of Enterprise Networks

Abstract

Mass application of blockchain technology is becoming reality. Adopting blockchain to enterprise network is innovative approach. It brings novel solution for increasing network security and improved efficiency of network maintenance. Key feature of blockchain is storing data securely in encrypted chains of blocks. It is a distributed database processing continuously growing list of transactions. This feature makes blockchain extremely resistant to unauthorized modifications of stored data. Application of blockchain for network monitoring and management facilitates secure and distributed medium for configuration of network nodes. Furthermore, all modifications in configuration of devices are traceable in blockchain and configuration recovery after incident is rather simple and transparent. In this paper we introduce architecture for monitoring and managing enterprise networks through private blockchain. Using blockchain, any change is attributable to administrator as in traditional network management with AAA implemented, but in addition rollback to previous configuration is simple. Using blockchain instead of traditional network management approaches built on database, distributed nature of blockchain removes single point of failure and simplify management of distributed networks. Our solution utilizes blockchain for secure dissemination of configuration changes to network nodes. Proof of concept of our solution was validated with Hyperledger Composer in our Cisco Lab.