IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/intnem/v30y2020i6ne2131.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Trustful ad hoc cross‐organizational data exchanges based on the Hyperledger Fabric framework

Author

Listed:
  • Laurens Van Hoye
  • Tim Wauters
  • Filip De Turck
  • Bruno Volckaert

Abstract

Organizations share data in a cross‐organizational context when they have the goal to derive additional knowledge by aggregating different data sources. The collaborations considered in this article are short‐lived and ad hoc, that is, they should be set up in a few minutes at most (e.g., in emergency scenarios). The data sources are located in different domains and are not publicly accessible. When a collaboration is finished, it is however unclear which exchanges happened. This could lead to possible disputes when dishonest organizations are present. The receipt of requests/responses could be falsely denied or their content could be point of discussion. In order to prevent such disputes afterwards, a logging mechanism is needed which generates a replicated irrefutable proof of which exchanges have happened during a single collaboration. Distributed database solutions can be taken from third parties to store the generated logs, but it can be difficult to find a party which is trusted by all participating organizations. Permissioned blockchains provide a solution for this as each organization can act as a consensus participant. Although the consensus mechanism of the permissioned blockchain Hyperledger Fabric (versions 1.0–1.4) is not fully decentralized, which clashes with the fundamental principle of blockchain, the framework is used in this article as an enabler to set up a distributed database, and a proposal for a logging mechanism is presented which does not require the third party to be fully trusted. A proof of concept is implemented which can be used to experiment with different data exchange setups. It makes use of generic web APIs and behaves according to a Markov chain in order to create a fully automated data exchange scenario where the participants explore their APIs dynamically. The resulting mechanism allows a data‐delivering organization to detect missing logs and to take action, for example, (temporarily) suspend collaboration. Furthermore, each organization is incentivized to follow the steps of the logging mechanism as it may lose access to data of others, otherwise. The created proof of concept is scaled to 10 organizations, which autonomously exchange different data types for 10 min, and evaluation results are presented accordingly.

Suggested Citation

  • Laurens Van Hoye & Tim Wauters & Filip De Turck & Bruno Volckaert, 2020. "Trustful ad hoc cross‐organizational data exchanges based on the Hyperledger Fabric framework," International Journal of Network Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(6), November.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:intnem:v:30:y:2020:i:6:n:e2131
    DOI: 10.1002/nem.2131
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/nem.2131
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/nem.2131?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:intnem:v:30:y:2020:i:6:n:e2131. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)1099-1190 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.