Blockchain is a data structure that can build a digital archive or account blocks of data like transactions that can be shared and readily accessed by users over networks of different computers.

In current years, several airlines, aircraft maintenance repair and overhaul (MRO) providers and other aviation organizations have published initiatives and research programs exploring from the use of Blockchain for handling the replacement of parts on in-service airplanes to buying flights.

Security experts now consider that Blockchain has the potential to defend multiple processes and transactions across various operations across the aviation ecosystem.

This digital ledger of transactions can register each time a part is placed or removed from an airplane. It can also easily capture each part’s pedigree and how long the part being renewed was in service and the location, identity, and credentials of the technician performing the repair. A blockchain is immune to the alteration of this historical data.

Simultaneously with the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), it’s been portrayed as one-third of the “holy trinity of disruptive technology.”

Blockchain’s characteristic of saving information on a digital ledger makes it tempting to avionics players included in the design as well as the industry as it scans for smarter, more reliable ways to save flight records, maintenance states, and other data.

“Blockchain will provide a safe harbor for design – we’ll always be able to revert to a safe design, plus we would theoretically have the ability to track all changes and the authors of those changes,” states Vance Hilderman, co-founder, and CEO of AFuzion, a 45-person software systems and safety development consulting company that has trained more than 1,500 engineers on how to execute cybersecurity and software systems standards for FAA and EASA compliance.

Hilderman states that Blockchain’s user anonymity that is so prized in financial transactions would require to be made evident for aviation applications. Utilizing it to design avionics systems would necessitate revising it, so every developer, supplier, and user along the chain is recognized along with the version and their contributions.

David Sheets, the security architect for Curtiss Wright, examines the Blockchain being a prospective security strategy to combat cyber invasions from quantum computers, particularly in the area of encryption.

“As more quantum computers come online, they can potentially break asymmetric encryption, which is used for signing and verification. Blockchain is an alternate strategy that relies on hashing instead of asymmetric encryption, so it’s resistant to those quantum computer attacks that asymmetric encryption fall to,” states Sheets.