Blockchain in Cyberdefence: A Technology Review from a Swiss Perspective
This is an incremental review for military professionals and novices to assess blockchain suitability in cyberdefense.
The paper reviews the blockchain concept and its potential applications in the military field, aiming to help readers decide when to use it appropriately.
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.