Logging mechanism for cross-organizational collaborations using Hyperledger Fabric

Abstract

Organizations nowadays are largely computerized, with a mixture of internal and external services providing them with on-demand functionality. In some situations (e.g. emergency situations), cross-organizational collaboration is needed, providing external users access to internal services. Trust between partners in such a collaboration can however be an issue. Although (federated) access control policies may be in place, it is unclear which data was requested and delivered after a collaboration has finished. This may lead to disputes between participating organizations. The open-source permissioned blockchain Hyperledger Fabric is utilized to create a logging mechanism for the actions performed by the participants in such a collaboration. This paper presents the architecture needed for such a logging mechanism and provides details on its operation. A prototype was designed in order to evaluate the performance of an asynchronous logging approach. Measurements show that the proposed logging mechanism enables organizations to create a log of service interactions with limited delay imposed on the data exchange process.