Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CRITICAL-CHAINS (IOT- & Blockchain-Enabled Security Framework for New Generation Critical Cyber-Physical Systems In Finance Sector)
Période du rapport: 2021-01-01 au 2022-09-30
What is the problem/issue being addressed?
The financial sector and its users need to be able to rely on the integrity and accountability of financial services as a societally critical infrastructure. Irregular and unaccountable financial transactions, cyber threats, non-user-friendly inefficient or impractical banking processes, complex contracting procedures and cumbersome financial market and insurance infrastructures constitute an obstacle to European open market development. The advent of Blockchain technology, the rapidly evolving internet-enabled financial services, in particular mobile money and crypto-currency-based services, and the ever-increasing threats of cyber-attacks and fraudulent transactions constitute a major challenge to which the European financial sector needs to respond supported by technological innovation that can be readily integrated with the existing legacy systems.
Why is it important for society?
The fast emerging evolution of blockchain enabled and crypto-currencies based financial services operating within an open banking environment that is vulnerable to cyber threats and fraudulent transactions provides a pressing need for to technological solutions to support the cyber security and integrity of the traditional financial services sector as well as the new blockchain and crypto and mobile money services. This is to be accompanied by new regulatory responses to the emerging operational environment within which to protect the traditional banking sector as well as the citizens as the users of financial services.
What are the overall objectives?
Critical-Chains responsible and responsive innovation objectives are to deliver:
A novel triangular accountability model and integrated framework supporting accountable, effective, accessible, fast, secure and privacy-preserving financial contracts and transactions to protect against illicit transactions, illegal money trafficking and fraud on FinTech e-operations.
This is an innovative cloud-based “X-as-a Service” solution stack including several layers:
1) Data integrity checking by involving financial institutions in the distributed Blockchain network;
2) Transaction and financial data flows analytics, modelling and mining;
3) Threat Intelligence & Predictive Modelling for Inter-Banks and Internet Banking, insurance and financial market infrastructures;
4) Multi-lateral Biometric-based and Role-based Authorisation & Authentication;
5) Hardware Security Module (HSM) enabled Cyber-Physical Security, embedded systems & IoT security for secure access using Security-Privacy-Contexts Semantic Modelling;
6) Secure and smart use of Blockchain services based on keyless signature infrastructure and hybrid (a)symmetric cryptography utilising truly random key generation.
The financial sector and its users need to be able to rely on the integrity and accountability of financial services as a societally critical infrastructure. Irregular and unaccountable financial transactions, cyber threats, non-user-friendly inefficient or impractical banking processes, complex contracting procedures and cumbersome financial market and insurance infrastructures constitute an obstacle to European open market development. The advent of Blockchain technology, the rapidly evolving internet-enabled financial services, in particular mobile money and crypto-currency-based services, and the ever-increasing threats of cyber-attacks and fraudulent transactions constitute a major challenge to which the European financial sector needs to respond supported by technological innovation that can be readily integrated with the existing legacy systems.
Why is it important for society?
The fast emerging evolution of blockchain enabled and crypto-currencies based financial services operating within an open banking environment that is vulnerable to cyber threats and fraudulent transactions provides a pressing need for to technological solutions to support the cyber security and integrity of the traditional financial services sector as well as the new blockchain and crypto and mobile money services. This is to be accompanied by new regulatory responses to the emerging operational environment within which to protect the traditional banking sector as well as the citizens as the users of financial services.
What are the overall objectives?
Critical-Chains responsible and responsive innovation objectives are to deliver:
A novel triangular accountability model and integrated framework supporting accountable, effective, accessible, fast, secure and privacy-preserving financial contracts and transactions to protect against illicit transactions, illegal money trafficking and fraud on FinTech e-operations.
This is an innovative cloud-based “X-as-a Service” solution stack including several layers:
1) Data integrity checking by involving financial institutions in the distributed Blockchain network;
2) Transaction and financial data flows analytics, modelling and mining;
3) Threat Intelligence & Predictive Modelling for Inter-Banks and Internet Banking, insurance and financial market infrastructures;
4) Multi-lateral Biometric-based and Role-based Authorisation & Authentication;
5) Hardware Security Module (HSM) enabled Cyber-Physical Security, embedded systems & IoT security for secure access using Security-Privacy-Contexts Semantic Modelling;
6) Secure and smart use of Blockchain services based on keyless signature infrastructure and hybrid (a)symmetric cryptography utilising truly random key generation.
The work performed has included the development and validation of the initial enabling technologies to support user scenarios (Use-Cases) for the following operational contexts of the emerging financial sector services:
Multi-factor biometric and secure hardware-enabled authentication and authorisation for secure access control
Secure cyber solutions for privacy-security protection including protection and mitigation against cyber attacks
Blockchain secure smart contracting for integrity and accountability protection of transactions
Transaction Flow modelling and anomaly detection
The initial set of use-cases have been successfully validated within 4 case-study application domains as follows:
• Banking
• Financial market infrastructures
• Insurance sector
• Transportation Case Study (Electronic toll collection & back-office support operations)
Conclusions of Action
D1.5 and D1.3 provided set out the various innovative results of the project which had already been delivered as Phase-1 prototypes. During Period-2 all those building blocks were completed, extended an demonstrated in targeted use-cases as selected and validated in a range of real-world use-cases by our sectoral gateway Partners for the Banking and Insurance sectors such as in anomalous transactions detection as in Fraudulent Insurance Claim Detection, Open Banking, Financial Transactions Flow Modelling, Blockchain-enabled Asset Integrity Assurance and Transportation ticketing (Toll operations) This included two additional “Administrative Use-Cases” as described in various deliverables as well as in our live demonstration workshops and peer-reviewed publications. Critical-Chains innovations have exceeded the planned objectives as evidenced by methodologically-guided use-centred solutions e.g. secure hardware-empowered authentication including user co-location and in-range testing (Distance Bounding). D7.8 provides a catalogue of the various Key Exploitable Results (KERS) of the project and D1.3 presents a thematic and reflective account of the resulting innovations
A substantial number of publications (20) and many workshop presentations have arisen from this work and at least one patent is being prepared for filing (Partner: ERARGE); the possibility of a further patent is being considered and at least a further two publications are in preparation on FMaaS.
Multi-factor biometric and secure hardware-enabled authentication and authorisation for secure access control
Secure cyber solutions for privacy-security protection including protection and mitigation against cyber attacks
Blockchain secure smart contracting for integrity and accountability protection of transactions
Transaction Flow modelling and anomaly detection
The initial set of use-cases have been successfully validated within 4 case-study application domains as follows:
• Banking
• Financial market infrastructures
• Insurance sector
• Transportation Case Study (Electronic toll collection & back-office support operations)
Conclusions of Action
D1.5 and D1.3 provided set out the various innovative results of the project which had already been delivered as Phase-1 prototypes. During Period-2 all those building blocks were completed, extended an demonstrated in targeted use-cases as selected and validated in a range of real-world use-cases by our sectoral gateway Partners for the Banking and Insurance sectors such as in anomalous transactions detection as in Fraudulent Insurance Claim Detection, Open Banking, Financial Transactions Flow Modelling, Blockchain-enabled Asset Integrity Assurance and Transportation ticketing (Toll operations) This included two additional “Administrative Use-Cases” as described in various deliverables as well as in our live demonstration workshops and peer-reviewed publications. Critical-Chains innovations have exceeded the planned objectives as evidenced by methodologically-guided use-centred solutions e.g. secure hardware-empowered authentication including user co-location and in-range testing (Distance Bounding). D7.8 provides a catalogue of the various Key Exploitable Results (KERS) of the project and D1.3 presents a thematic and reflective account of the resulting innovations
A substantial number of publications (20) and many workshop presentations have arisen from this work and at least one patent is being prepared for filing (Partner: ERARGE); the possibility of a further patent is being considered and at least a further two publications are in preparation on FMaaS.
The Critical-Chains innovation is based on analysing the socio-economic and technological needs and impact of the solution stack that responsibly responds to the challenges of privacy, security and integrity protection of the financial services by providing support for:
Accessibility from anywhere and anytime by enabling secure mobile banking/insurance and IoT.
1. Data integrity and privacy by blockchain-enabled services.
2. Accountability by integrating financial authorities actively within end-to-end financial e-operations for to protection against financial fraud and enable secure and inclusive scale-up and take-up of open financial services
3. Holistic Security of Financial services at all levels by enabling cyber-physical security.
Critical-Chains MAIN FRAMEWORK as a cloud-based data transmission, communication and financial transactions horizontal Framework (baseline system) comprising:
A) Cyber-Physical Security as-a-Service (CPSaaS) that is composed of:
• Blockchain Core Data Integrity layer → Blockchain-as-a-Service (BCaaS)
• AUTHenticaton and Authorisation services strengthened through hardware-based secure IoT sticks (realized at chip level enabling mini-USB and Bluetooth authentication) and biometric authentication → AUTH-as-a-Service (AUTHaaS)
• Cryptographic backend enabling symmetric cryptography, hashing, truly random number generation, prime number and key generation "as-a-Service" → Cryptography-as-a-Service (CRYPTaaS)
• Data and information Security and privacy preservation at all layers of cloud through Hardware (HW) Security Module (HSM) and effective IoT connectivity enhanced with beyond Bluetooth Low Energy 5.0 chip combined within "as-a-Service" model (HwSaaS)
B) Data flows and information modelling and regarding mining tools (for Inter-banks, Internet Banking and Financial Markets Infrastructure flows) →Flow Modelling-as-a-Service (FMaaS)
The validation of the Critical-Chains innovation includes system reliability, usability, user-acceptance, social acceptability, ethical, legal, privacy protection, environmental and legal compliance including societal impacts in the context of the geo-political and legal framework to support the security and integrity of the financial sector for the European economy and the citizens.
Accessibility from anywhere and anytime by enabling secure mobile banking/insurance and IoT.
1. Data integrity and privacy by blockchain-enabled services.
2. Accountability by integrating financial authorities actively within end-to-end financial e-operations for to protection against financial fraud and enable secure and inclusive scale-up and take-up of open financial services
3. Holistic Security of Financial services at all levels by enabling cyber-physical security.
Critical-Chains MAIN FRAMEWORK as a cloud-based data transmission, communication and financial transactions horizontal Framework (baseline system) comprising:
A) Cyber-Physical Security as-a-Service (CPSaaS) that is composed of:
• Blockchain Core Data Integrity layer → Blockchain-as-a-Service (BCaaS)
• AUTHenticaton and Authorisation services strengthened through hardware-based secure IoT sticks (realized at chip level enabling mini-USB and Bluetooth authentication) and biometric authentication → AUTH-as-a-Service (AUTHaaS)
• Cryptographic backend enabling symmetric cryptography, hashing, truly random number generation, prime number and key generation "as-a-Service" → Cryptography-as-a-Service (CRYPTaaS)
• Data and information Security and privacy preservation at all layers of cloud through Hardware (HW) Security Module (HSM) and effective IoT connectivity enhanced with beyond Bluetooth Low Energy 5.0 chip combined within "as-a-Service" model (HwSaaS)
B) Data flows and information modelling and regarding mining tools (for Inter-banks, Internet Banking and Financial Markets Infrastructure flows) →Flow Modelling-as-a-Service (FMaaS)
The validation of the Critical-Chains innovation includes system reliability, usability, user-acceptance, social acceptability, ethical, legal, privacy protection, environmental and legal compliance including societal impacts in the context of the geo-political and legal framework to support the security and integrity of the financial sector for the European economy and the citizens.