Towards developing a secure medical image sharing system based on zero trust principles and blockchain technology

Abstract

Background Data security has been a critical topic of research and discussion since the onset of data sharing in e-health systems. Although digitalization of data has increased efficiency and speed, it has also made data vulnerable to cyber attacks. Medical records in particular seem to be the regular victims of hackers. Several data breach incidents throughout history have warranted the invention of security measures against these threats. Although various security procedures like firewalls, virtual private networks, encryption, etc are present, a mix of these approaches are required for maximum security in medical image and data sharing. Methods Relatively new, blockchain has become an effective tool for safeguarding sensitive information. However, to ensure overall protection of medical data (images), security measures have to be taken at each step, from the beginning, during and even after transmission of medical images which is ensured by zero trust security model. In this research, a number of studies that deal with these two concepts were studied and a decentralized and trustless framework was proposed by combining these two concepts for secured medical data and image transfer and storage. Results Research output suggested blockchain technology ensures data integrity by maintaining an audit trail of every transaction while zero trust principles make sure the medical data is encrypted and only authenticated users and devices interact with the network. Thus the proposed model solves a lot of vulnerabilities related to data security. Conclusions A system to combat medical/health data vulnerabilities has been proposed. The system makes use of the immutability of blockchain, the additional security of zero trust principles, and the scalability of off chain data storage using Inter Planetary File Systems (IPFS). The adoption of this system suggests to enhance the security of medical or health data transmission.

Blockchain Integration With Digital Technology and the Future of Health Care Ecosystems: Systematic Review

“…Once a transaction request has been made by a user, the blockchain protocol requests the network nodes to verify the validity of the entire blockchain content. This in turn means that unless the networks nodes verify that the current version of the chain is identical to theirs and approve the transaction, it cannot be added to the chain [ 16 , 17 ].…”

“…It would be extremely difficult for someone to gather enough computing power to hack the blockchain database by altering the ledgers. The larger the blockchain, the more distributed it is, the more enormous is the computing power required for hacking, and the more secure it becomes [ 16 , 17 ].…”

CES Blocks—A Novel Chaotic Encryption Schemes-Based Blockchain System for an IoT Environment

“…Maliha Sultana et al [13] have provided a framework that gives a short outline about how to decentralize a trust less model that can handle security issues of medical images in healthcare systems. This has been finished by the fussing blockchain with zero trust standards.…”

Empowering clinical research in a decentralized world

“…Zero-trust authentication (Table 1 ) occurs among all respective nodes of the network. One emerging technology to achieve zero-trust architectures in health care is via blockchain-based technologies 25 and this has been evaluated in medical image sharing 26 .…”