The Role of Blockchain in Supporting Critical National Infrastructure

Abstract

Cyber-attacks have become more sophisticated over recent years with the different configuration types and various industry sectors have suffered from a range of these different attack vectors resulting in some devastating outcomes. These have manifested in the shape of ransomware, malware, manipulation methods, phishing and spear-phishing. Whilst data breaches are a serious incident, in most organisations, there is a growing concern regarding attacks that are designed to have a more destructive effect such as the Ukraine cyber-attack in 2015 that resulted in a shutdown of the power grid. Or the WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017 that caused widespread chaos with healthcare institutions unable to carry out any tasks since access to data/systems was unavailable. These critical national infrastructure (CNI) attacks into sectors such as healthcare cause data breaches/disruptions and are also able to leverage vulnerabilities in the industrial processes containing ICS and SCADA systems. Perhaps the state sponsored cyber-attacks cause the most concern as they tend to be at the more sophisticated level of the spectrum and maximize on amount of potential harm that is delivered. There is growing interest in how to protect CNI besides just using traditional methods such as regular patching, Intrusion Detection and Prevention systems (IDPS), up to date compliance policies, etc., and blockchain can be the mechanism that gives another protection layer to protect mission critical data. Blockchain, a decentralized network, offers the features of immutability, non-tampering, security encryption, auditability, and can be a permissioned type of environment where the set of users are invited and not open for all. Blockchain can complement these traditional systems by offering another layer of protection to the sensitive and mission critical data.