A Survey on Blockchain for Information Systems Management and Security

Highlights

• a survey regarding the use of blockchain as a tool for application within information systems
• provide an extensive comparison, clustering, and classification
• introduce the history of both blockchain and information systems
• blockchain and its potential to impact information systems
• address all issues in the information systems management area
• blockchain allows for the elimination of intermediate third parties because of the public trust it facilitates

Objectives

• Briefly introduce the role of information systems and blockchain
• Explore the relationship between blockchain and information systems
• Summarize blockchain-based information systems challenges
• A survey of recent applications of blockchain technologies, their results, and impacts.
• Find factors that are critically important in the widespread adoption of blockchain throughout the information systems domain

Why it matters

• Information systems serve a fundamental role in modern society
• Using blockchain could increase the security of the information systems by reducing reliance on third parties
• How blockchain can be utilized is not clear

Incorporation of Blockchain Technologies

• Blockchain, being such a general-purpose approach to manipulating data, allows for it to be utilized within any number of systems for a wide variety of purposes
• Blockchain, with its diverse set of tools and interwoven communication and consensus requirements, allows blockchain-based applications and tools to work more readily with other existing systems in many cases.
• Blockchain’s distributed ledger technology serves as an incredibly new and profound innovation replacing the modern database-driven architecture common to many software products
• By distributing the record among several distinct entities, blockchain implementations reduce the risk of a critical failure impacting an entire system
• Blockchain provides opportunities for improvement and a more secure integration of third-party products while mitigating the risk of supplying those parties with sensitive information
• A variety of information systems within a breadth of industries could benefit through the adoption of blockchain through data validation, transaction integrity, and efficiency.
• The decentralized architecture unique to blockchain implementations provides a great deal of security and stability.
• However, the novelty and infancy of present blockchain technologies have also led several to doubt the capacity of blockchain to appropriately handle data at the scale most businesses will need to effectively utilize it.
• The decentralized architecture is useful in security contexts, providing some degree of inherent security by requiring each alteration to be updated across the entire record.
• Blockchain technologies are also expanding in their applications with the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT)
• Consensus protocol improvements may become an important improvement in enhancing blockchain implementations and reducing these types of issues

Blockchain-based Information Systems Challenges

• Phase 1
  • third parties reduction
  • interoperability enhancement
    • foundational interoperability: communication should happen without an interpretation of data
    • structural interoperability: provides an expected schema and enforces it
    • semantic interoperability: the interpretation of semantical data
  • efficiency
• Phase 2
  • fault tolerance
    • The distributed ledger technology is limited in its scalability to larger systems
    • Systems with differing computing resources may find incompatible ledgers between one another.
  • compatibility issues
  • broadening use
    • blockchain can help innovate and improve the development of smart cities
• Phase 3
  • data validation
    • Blockchain Connected Gateways are proposed as a solution to reduce the chance of information in these areas from being compromised.
    • By requiring access to a blockchain network, records and authenticity of users or information can be validated against an entire network of trusted agents instead of simply trusting the authentication provided by one.
  • transaction integrity
    • One approach to ensuring transaction integrity is through the use of the concept of “smart contracts.”
• Phase 4
  • information systems and supply chain

Results

• The full potential of blockchain has not yet been reached.
• Creating open-source blockchain tools and libraries for common se would encourage smaller industries to use. In this way, blockchain can be harnessed and made more widely available.
• By working to move the blockchain more to benefit the public, blockchain will become a more well-renowned technology and turn into something much more powerful than it is at present

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