Cybersecurity: Defending Against 21st Century Threats - Annotated Bibliography

Introduction

In the 21st century, cyber-attacks have been rampant and continues to rise. Over the last decade, the cyberspace war has tremendously increased. States' infrastructure systems have been targeted, which includes water systems and power plants. On a private level, individuals and businesses are aware of the threat of a ransomware attack and what it is capable to do to their personal and business finances. Whilst people and businesses alike are looking for emerging consumer technology, business and states are concerned more about cybersecurity. Cyber-attack and defense aim to identify weaknesses exploiting or defending it in the process. According to professionals, the available technology can still be exploited given the resources and time, which both bad actor countries and individual hackers have at their disposal. Thus the solutions to these issues are to develop new technologies that pose challenges for other groups to exploit despite having the advanced technological and financial resources. The paper will explore the role of blockchain technology in cybersecurity by reviewing the literature on the topic.

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Ahram, T., Sargolzaei, A., Sargolzaei, S., Daniels, J., & Amaba, B. (2017, June). Blockchain technology innovations. In 2017 IEEE Technology & Engineering Management Conference (TEMSCON) (pp. 137-141). IEEE. ).

The article describes the emerging blockchain technology application in cybersecurity. The author posits that since blockchain technology introduction, it has revolutionized the digital world by bringing a fresh point of view to systems efficiency, security, and resiliency. The authors argue that despite being the foundation of cryptocurrency and popularised by bitcoin this technology can be applied in cybersecurity. Blockchain gives a secure way to transact any kind of good and service. However, cyber fraud and crimes are hindering industrial expansion. To tackle this challenge, the authors posit that blockchain will enable quicker product innovations, faster integration with cloud and internet of things (IoT) technology, closer customer relations, and more agile value chains. Besides, it facilitates a low-cost trade with trusted contracts monitored without the third party's knowledge or intervention.

This article summarises the benefits of applying blockchain in cybersecurity. Since only the transacting parties know what they are trading without intervention from third parties makes this technology safe and secure to use. Thus, this emerging technology provides a new means to combat cybercrime and fraud. This is because it enables smart engagements, agreements, and contracts with fundamental, strong cybersecurity measures.

Puthal, D., Malik, N., Mohanty, S. P., Kougianos, E., & Yang, C. (2018). The blockchain is a decentralized security framework [future directions]. IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine, 7(2), 18-21.

The authors point out that blockchain is emerging as key ingenious and propitious technologies to address cybersecurity concerns. They posit that despite blockchain being an emerging technology it has been adopted and replaced financial transactions in different organizations and can be used in various industries. Thus, the articles provide an overview of the technology in efforts to realize security across various users and third parties. The authors explore how the technology works and concludes that it is an effective tool for addressing cybersecurity using a digital signature, hashes, and a program that rewards the users while ensuring the ledger validity. Nonetheless, the authors warn that its adoption is widespread while its outcomes are still unknown.

This article backs up blockchain as an effective solution to cybersecurity. The technology can be applied in various industries and is suitable because data distribution is protected from being tampered with by the third-party since it is highly encrypted through the use of cryptography. In essence, this technology is suitable to be applied in cybersecurity.

Shackelford, S. J., & Myers, S. (2017). Block-by-block: leveraging the power of blockchain technology to build trust and promote cyber peace. Yale JL & Tech., 19, 334.

The authors define blockchain as a sophisticated, distributed online ledger (Shackelford &Myers 2017, 3). The authors claim that there is a demand for blockchain by organizations that are examining it. Since it makes businesses more effective and efficient in recording property deeds to stimulating the growth of smart contracts and securing medical devices. The article argues that IBM and Disney are exploring blockchain to create a tamper-proof message system. The authors analyze the probable effects of blockchain on enhancing the cybersecurity of forms across a wide range of industries. They conclude that blockchain can transform the way business and people cooperate. And block by block the society can build trust in a period of increase cyber insecurity

In this light, blockchain is promising in the context of improving cybersecurity in CAs and other related vital infrastructures systems. Therefore, blockchain deserves sustained attention. This means that to build a sustainable blockchain will take time, finances, advanced technology, and other relevant stakeholders such as policymakers.

Alkurdi, F., Elgendi, I., Munasinghe, K. S., Sharma, D., & Jamalipour, A. (2018, November). Blockchain in IoT security: a survey. In 2018 28th International Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (ITNAC) (pp. 1-4). IEEE.

The author claims that blockchain has a huge prospective in the future. They describe it as a technology that gives the capacity to generate and share transaction ledgers that cannot be tampered with. The authors point out that the use of blockchain has been used in various areas such as security, IoT, and finance. The article focuses on blockchain effectiveness in the IoT sector overcoming the centralized bottlenecks which are expensive and slow since third parties have to regularly examine and verify every transaction between two or more devices. They posit that blockchain smart contracts permit devices to work autonomously and securely by developing agreements that can only be done upon completing several particular requirements.

Thus, blockchain becomes very difficult to compromise since data is distributed and shared across a decentralized cryptographically secured network. Block by block networks provides tamper-proof security. However, what weaknesses if any do the IoT devices develop when they connect the internet. As such, they should be secured and ensure that hackers are not tampering with them for blockchain to work effectively in IoT.

Yaga, D., Mell, P., Roby, N., & Scarfone, K. (2019). Blockchain technology overview. arXiv preprint arXiv:1906.11078.

The report defines blockchains as tamper-resistant and tampers evident digital ledgers applied in a distributed fashion without a centralized repository or central authority. The technology facilitates a group of users to record transactions on a shared ledger such that once the transaction is published it cannot be changed. Nevertheless, to modify the already published data blocks and transactions are created which are treated as modifications and updates.

The report aims is to expound on the concept of block technology for companies that consider implementing it. Blockchain has the potential to facilitate secure transactions without the need for a central authority. Several blockchain technology-based solutions have been developed. For instance, it has been used in electronic cash systems that are secured by cryptography.

Sankar, L. S., Sindhu, M., & Sethumadhavan, M. (2017, January). Survey of consensus protocols on blockchain applications. In 2017 4th International Conference on Advanced Computing and Communication Systems (ICACCS) (pp. 1-5). IEEE.

The authors posit that there is a need for trust in trade when selling or exchanging commodities. Nevertheless, sometimes the third parties do not have integrity and are not trusted by businesses. Therefore, blockchain addresses this lack of trust through cryptographically by introducing digital signatures. Integrity and authenticity are also provided using the elliptic curve digital signature.

The article posits that many financial institutions are using this technology to secure their financial transactions. Through the uses of various nodes, the users can be confident that which may be open to all or the applicability ensures privacy. It is worth noting how blockchain is being used to secure IoT applications to keep hackers out of the organizations' systems.

Singh, S., & Singh, N. (2016, December). Blockchain: Future of financial and cybersecurity. In 2016 2nd international conference on contemporary computing and informatics (IC3I) (pp. 463-467). IEEE

The authors describe the use of blockchain insecure exchange of digital currency, transactions, and to perform deals. All the users can access the latest copy of the ledger with encryptions so that they can verify a new exchange. Thus, blockchain ledger maintains an increasing tamper-proof data structure block with batches of personal transactions. The article explains the various aspects of blockchain and how they work, characteristics, and why it is needed.

Hence, the paper tries to evaluate blockchain as a key player in shaping the adoption of IoT, banking, and financial institutions' future. Therefore, I believe that blockchain technology will revolutionize many industrial sectors by ensuring cybercrime and fraud are no longer viable through its adoption.

Dai, F., Shi, Y., Meng, N., Wei, L., & Ye, Z. (2017, November). From Bitcoin to cybersecurity: A comparative study of blockchain application and security issues. In 2017 4th International Conference on Systems and Informatics (ICSAI) (pp. 975-979). IEEE.

The authors claim that blockchain has restored the meaning of trust through the uses of consensus mechanisms and embedded cryptography as a decentralized and distributed information management system. It has provided data integrity, security, and anonymity without needing a third party to intervene as is the case with traditional systems. The article carried out systematic research on the present blockchain technology application in cybersecurity.

Blockchain has brought many advantages, but the main benefit of this technology is that it is more secure technically than others. Since several users can join, the network has many nodes which help the users to distribute more information broadly, ensuring that it becomes less vulnerable and more resilient. As such, blockchain is the future of cybersecurity.

Mylrea, M., & Gourisetti, S. N. G. (2017, September). Blockchain for smart grid resilience: Exchanging distributed energy at speed, scale, and security. In 2017 Resilience Week (RWS) (pp. 18-23). IEEE

The articles posit that blockchain may assist in addressing some complicated issues associated with the trustworthiness and integrity of quick, distributed, complex transactions, and data exchanges. The authors argue that blockchain facilitates smart contracts and commoditizes trust to enable auditing of many transactions from different users based on predetermined rules between the customers and energy providers.

As such, smart contracts based on a blockchain removes the need to interact with third parties. Therefore, distributed energy monetized and is exchanged and transacted. Which helps save the transactive energy cost, increasing sustainability and security of distributed energy resources. Therefore, cybercrime and fraud are prevented by organizations adopting blockchain technology.

Tosh, D. K., Shetty, S., Liang, X., Kamhoua, C. A., Kwiat, K. A....