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A Comparison Between SWIFT and Blockchain from a Cyber Resiliency Perspective

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Critical Information Infrastructures Security (CRITIS 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 11777))

  • The original version of this chapter was revised: One of the references in the original paper referred to a paper that has since been retracted due to plagiarism. The correction to this chapter is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37670-3_19

Abstract

Payments critical infrastructure is subject to rapid technological change. Increasingly sophisticated threats must be addressed to ensure the banking and financial system security and integrity. Several high-profile cyber-incidents have recently shaken the global financial community and stimulated renewed efforts to reinforce and bolster its security framework. Two different cross border payments management approaches have emerged over the years: the SWIFT financial messaging standard and the innovative peer-to-peer transaction model based on the blockchain technology. Debates about which one will prevail as the best practice are currently a very popular topic. Security, and more specifically resiliency to evolving cyber threats, will likely be the main point of concern. Both the SWIFT and the blockchain models present potential exposure to such vulnerabilities. Ultimately, the discussion boils down to an assessment of whether a decentralized, distributed system like the blockchain better meets the integrity requirements of a modern payments infrastructure and is more suitable to mitigate the root cause of cyber incidents, which is human error.

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Change history

  • 05 September 2020

    Reference 26 of this paper has been updated. The authors were unaware that [1] had almost fully plagiarized [2] and wish to give full credit to the original authors.

    [1] RETRACTED ARTICLE: Dheeraj, J., Gurhubaran, S.: DDoS mitigation using blockchain. Int. J. Res. Eng. Sci. Manag. 1(10) (2018).

    [2] Rodrigues, B., Bocek, T., Lareida, A., Hausheer, D., Rafati, S., Stiller, B.: A blockchain-based architecture for collaborative DDoS mitigation with smart contracts. In: Tuncer, D., Koch, R., Badonnel, R., Stiller, B. (eds.) AIMS 2017. LNCS, vol. 10356, pp. 16–29. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60774-0_2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hermes Bay S.r.l., 00143, Rome, RM, Italy

    Luisa Franchina & Guido Carlomagno

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  1. Luisa Franchina
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  2. Guido Carlomagno
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Correspondence to Guido Carlomagno .

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  1. Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

    Simin Nadjm-Tehrani

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Franchina, L., Carlomagno, G. (2020). A Comparison Between SWIFT and Blockchain from a Cyber Resiliency Perspective. In: Nadjm-Tehrani, S. (eds) Critical Information Infrastructures Security. CRITIS 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11777. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37670-3_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37670-3_12

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-37670-3

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