Investigating Blockchain Technology for HealthCare CyberSecurity
D Davis*, J Gerdes, University of South Carolina College of Engineering and Computing, Columbia, SC
Presentations
PO-GePV-M-302 (Sunday, 7/10/2022) [Eastern Time (GMT-4)]
ePoster Forums
Purpose: We explore the feasibility of implementing IBM’s Hyperledger-Fabric™ blockchain for Enterprise Cybersecurity to address security holes in sharing electronic health information across a range of endpoints and potentially insecure networks. There is a need to manage this exchange of information to protect the privacy of the patient, integrity of the data, and operational safety of the healthcare network. Healthcare networks include a wide range of digital signatures from EHR (Electronic Health Records), medical imaging, mHealth, and medical IoT (Internet of Things) requiring various levels of control and access.
Methods: We have implemented a test Hyperledger-fabric.v2.4 network running on Windows 10 64-bit, Node.js v17.6, Docker Desktop v4.4.4, and WSL 2. We have developed test scenarios to satisfy the following requirements of sharing healthcare information: electronic information from different formats; channels for various levels of privacy; chain code for multidisciplinary collaborations; and access from a wide range of devices.
Results: Hyperledger-fabric blockchain requires in-house management resources and maintenance of the system but is more secure. Our literature review shows that blockchain technology is successful in preventing intrusion and malicious attacks that otherwise would fail without blockchain.
Conclusion: The fabric is a distributed ledger technology platform that sets up trust models between participants and hosts with immutable actions. Smart contracts, chain code, can be written with general purpose programming languages like JavaScript running on Node.js to manage the privacy and confidentiality of the underlying data. The healthcare network can be partitioned into multiple blockchains through membership only channels, ending intrusions by unwanted guests or observers. This is a private blockchain, requiring less storage and computing resources compared to public blockchains. Security is dynamic with features like encryption algorithms and data provenance needed in healthcare. Our next phase will be to develop a security model with multiple channels to address data privacy.
Keywords
Taxonomy
IM/TH- Informatics: Informatics in Therapy (general)
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