Distributed Attribute-Based Access Control System Using Permissioned Blockchain

Abstract: The lack of transparent and reliable infrastructure for data sharing prevents many data owners from sharing their data. Data trust is a paradigm that facilitates data sharing by forcing data controllers to be transparent about the process of sharing and reusing data.

Blockchain technology has the potential to present the essential properties for creating a distributed, practical, and secure data trust framework. Blockchain can transform current auditing practices and utilize automatic enforcement of smart contracts to establish trust without relying on intermediaries.

In this seminar, blockchain's potential as an infrastructure for developing a data trust framework will be discussed. This talk introduces two decentralized applications based on blockchain for sharing healthcare data and physical access control as examples of decentralized access control applications, followed by introducing the decentralized attribute-based access control system. These studies provide trusted auditability required for data sharing and access control systems and, ultimately, data trust framework. In the end, this seminar presents a distributed and adaptive data trust framework using blockchain technology. The proposed framework addresses the concerns of both data owners and data users. Data owners have full control over their data access management. Data users are also enabled to assess the quality and trustworthiness of the data that have been shared with them.

Biography: Sara Rouhani is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Computer Science supervised by Prof. Ralph Deters. Her research interests are using blockchain and smart contracts for developing distributed access control and data trust. She has examined the potential of blockchain in interdisciplinary areas such as healthcare, business process management, agriculture and energy systems. As a part of her research, she has collaborated with various industrial partners, such as the Linux Foundation, Hyperledger projects, Mitacs and multiple start-ups.