Proposing a Blockchain-based Solution to Verify the Integrity of Hardcopy Documents

Abstract

Even with the ability to produce documents digitally, the paperless environment has yet to become a reality in South Africa. Hardcopy documents are still printed daily which makes them susceptible to document fraud. In South Africa, a case was reported recently, where someone who was creating fake documents was exposed. This introduces the challenge when using hardcopy documents which is loss of integrity. Thus, it is vital to have systems in place to verify document integrity and be able to determine when a document has been tampered with. Various techniques have been used to secure documents, yet the challenge persists. The combination of 2D barcodes, digital signatures, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), cryptographic hashing has proved the potential to achieve good results when combined. Recently, blockchain has been added as one of the techniques to be employed for document verification. This paper presents a proposed solution that incorporates the combination of 2D barcodes, OCR, cryptographic hashing and blockchain. As this is still on-going work, experiments are still required to demonstrate the viability of the solution.