Regulatory Policies

With years of development, the blockchain industry has taken shape, but enterprise blockchain applications are still at an exploratory stage. The blockchain ecosystem contains SPs, application vendors, and users. SPs in this context provide blockchain information services, whose compliance
requirements are surely different from those for other information services (such as cloud services) due to the blockchain technology’s unique characteristics of non-deletability and support for post-event forensics.

The enterprise-related blockchain security landscape has two layers of meanings: enterprise blockchain security situation and blockchain-related enterprise security situation. The former refers to the security posture of enterprises that have deployed blockchain applications. In the latter case, although an enterprise does not deploy any blockchain applications, security threats facing it point to blockchains.

In terms of the enterprise blockchain security situation, historically, blockchains were mainly public ones at the initial stage. Therefore, most vulnerabilities disclosed and security events detected are related to public blockchains. Consortium blockchains are still infants, so research on their security is conducted tentatively, explaining why there are so few vulnerabilities and security events related to them.

This chapter analyzes security threats facing enterprise blockchains.

Current mainstream consortium blockchain platforms include Hyperledger, Quorum, and R3 Corda, which are described in detail in the following sections.

This chapter describes the characteristics, usage scenarios, and architecture of enterprise blockchains, and illustrates three major enterprise blockchain systems in three separate sections.

Blockchains are distributed digital ledgers of cryptographically signed transactions that are grouped into blocks. Each block is cryptographically linked to the previous one (making it tamper evident) after validation and undergoing a consensus decision. As new blocks are added, older blocks become more difficult to modify (creating tamper resistance). New blocks are replicated across copies of the ledger within the network, and any conflicts are resolved automatically using established rules. Since its launch, the blockchain technology has gone through ups and downs, but predictably, will gain momentum for rapid growth in the years to come.

Generally, blockchains are divided into public, consortium, and private blockchains, each applied in particular scenarios.