Blockchain in Cyberdefence: A Technology Review from a Swiss Perspective

TL;DR

This paper reviews blockchain technology from a Swiss perspective, highlighting its potential and limitations for secure applications, especially in military contexts, to guide appropriate use cases.

Contribution

It provides a high-level overview of blockchain concepts and evaluates their suitability for various applications, including military, from a non-technical perspective.

Findings

Blockchain offers security and trust properties through cryptographic primitives.

Not all problems are suitable for blockchain solutions.

Guidance on when to use or avoid blockchain in security applications.

Abstract

Since the advent of bitcoin in 2008, the concept of a blockchain has widely spread. Besides crypto currencies and trading activities, there is a wide range of potential application areas where blockchains are providing the main building block for secure solutions. From a technical point of view, a blockchain involves a set of cryptographic primitives to provide a data structure with security and trust properties. However, a blockchain is not a golden bullet. It may be well suited for some problems, but often an inappropriate data structure for many applications. In this paper, we review the high-level concept of a blockchain and present possible applications in the military field. Our review is targeted to readers with little prior domain knowledge as a support to decide where it makes sense to use a blockchain and where a blockchain might not be the right tool at hand.