Securing Online Knowledge Systems by Blockchain: a proposed solution for model Online Defence Information System

Abstract

Information systems offer a range of services by amalgamating information, technology, people, and organizations to serve business needs to solve problems, and disseminate knowledge within and in public. Certain unclassified but restricted information could also be made available on these systems/platforms to a class of pre-authenticated registered users. The model Online Defence Information System (ODIS) (https://www.odisys.in) is one such system that is the basis of discussion in the paper. It is designed and developed as an important knowledge resource for defence community. An expert can also contribute by making online submissions of tacit knowledge for the benefit of society. The system is built on the centralized networking architecture and is based on trust management (trust of content and platform). Given the security vulnerabilities rising proportionally with computational power, it has been established that a centralized system is more likely to see malicious attacks than a decentralized system. Paper explores the solution to counter apparent vulnerabilities and draws an analytic comparison with “blockchain”, decentralized network architecture. The paper gives an overview of ODIS's architecture, development and design methodologies and challenges, and a solution that offers safety, security, authenticity and verifiability of contents on the system such as ODIS.