journal article·2021-11-18Open access

Educational Blockchain: A Secure Degree Attestation and Verification Traceability Architecture for Higher Education Commission

Abdullah Ayub Khan, Asif Ali Laghari, Aftab Ahmed Shaikh, Sami Bourouis, Amir Madany Mamlouk, Hammam Alshazly

Applied Sciences· Volume 11· Issue 22

Abstract

Degree attestation verification and traceability are complex one-to-one processes between the Higher Education Commission (HEC) and universities. The procedure shifted to the digitalized manner, but still, on a certain note, manual authentication is required. In the initial process, the university verified the degree and stamp seal first. Then, a physical channel of degree submission to the receiving ends is activated. After that, the degree is attested while properly examining and analyzing the tamper records related to degree credentials through e-communication with the university for verification and validation. This issue poses a serious challenge to educational information integrity and privacy. Potentially, blockchain technology could become a standardized platform to perform tasks including issuing, verifying, auditing, and tracing immutable records, which would enable the HEC, universities, and Federal Education Ministry (FEM) to quickly and easily get attested and investigate the forge proof versions of certificates. Besides, decentralized distributed data blocks in chronological order provide high security between distributed ledgers, consensus engine, digital signature, smart contracts, permissioned application, and private network node transactions that guarantee degree record validation and traceability. This paper presents an architecture (HEDU-Ledger) and detail design of blockchain-enabled hyperledger fabric applications implementation for degree attestation verification and traceable direct channel design between HEC and universities. The hyperledger fabric endorses attestation records first, and then validates (committer) the degree and maintains the secure chain of tracing between stakeholder peer nodes. Furthermore, this HEDU-Ledger architecture avoids language and administrative barriers. It also provides robustness in terms of security and privacy of records and maintains integrity with secure preservation as compared to that of the other state-of-the-art methods.
Source: crossref · Quality: baseline

Research context

OpenAlex topics: Blockchain Technology Applications and Security · Security and Verification in Computing · Cloud Data Security Solutions

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

Affiliations

Department of Computer Science, Sindh Madressatul Islam University, Karachi 74000, Sindh, Pakistan

Research Lab of Artificial Intelligence and Information Security, Faculty of Computing Science and Information Technology, Benazir Bhutto Shaheed University Lyari, Karachi 75660, Sindh, Pakistan

Department of Information Technology, Collage of Computers and Information Technology, Taif University, P.O. Box 11099, Taif 21944, Saudi Arabia

Institute for Neuro- and Bioinformatics, University of Lübeck, 23562 Lübeck, Germany

Faculty of Computers and Information, South Valley University, Qena 83523, Egypt

Funding

Taif University · Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany

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