A Cloud Microservices Architecture for Data Integrity Verifiability Based on Blockchain

• Published in: Applied sciences Vol. 12; no. 5; p. 2754
• Main Authors: López-Pimentel, Juan Carlos, Morales-Rosales, Luis Alberto, Algredo-Badillo, Ignacio
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.03.2022
• Subjects: audit; Auditing; Automation; Blockchain; Cloud computing; cloud systems; Data integrity; Forensic sciences; integrity; Internet; microservices; Privacy; Servers; Software; Systems design
• ISSN: 2076-3417; 2076-3417
• DOI: 10.3390/app12052754

The current digital age, mainly characterized by an economy based upon information technology, demands a data integrity service, even more so because organizations and companies are migrating their services over the cloud. This is not a simple task; it is cumbersome since traditional schemes in databases could be subject to modifications. However, it can be solved using blockchain technology. This paper provides a data integrity verifiability architecture for cloud systems based on blockchain. The architecture provides a mechanism to store events (as logs) within a blockchain platform from any cloud system. Users can then consult data integrity through a microservice, acting as an intermediate server that carries out a set of verification steps within the blockchain, which confirms the integrity of a previously stored log. Our architecture takes advantage of the blockchain strength concerning integrity, providing a traceability track of the stored logs. A prototype system and a case study were implemented based on the proposed architecture. Our experimental results show that the proposed decentralized architecture can be adapted to cloud existing systems that were born without blockchain technology and require a modular and scalable audit characteristic.