Information technology for secure storing of academic performance results

Abstract

Abstract. The relevance of research on the protection of academic performance results in educational institutions is defined at the article. The legal framework regulating information protection requirements for the case was analyzed. The analysis of used mechanisms and tools of for the academic performance results protection used by known tools was presented. On the basis of the analysis, approaches for known solutions improvement were defined, that became the basis for proposing the solution for such protection. The results of data model designing are presented. On the basis of this model, the requirements for security attributes of the entities related to students’ academic performance were analyzed. To achieve the goal, the method of secure data storing of the academic performance results was adapted in order to improve scalability for the information protection in the academic field. The solution is proposed that involves simultaneous utilizing of centralized and decentralized data repositories, which allows to improve the level of protection of data integrity and availability in comparison too centralized repositories, and to increase the level of privacy protection and reduce data redundancy in comparison to decentralized repositories. To yield proof-of-concept, one of the possible architectures of the software application that implements the proposed information technology is presented. This architecture is implemented as a client-server web application that provides a user interface for secure data storage utilizing the relational database, distributed storage IPFS and blockchain, which supports smart contracts. The testing results of this developed software application for secure storing of academic performance information were presented. This made it possible to prove the security of the developed smart contracts, as well as the possibility of the proposed technology utilization in practical situations within the business processes of educational institutions. The perspectives of further research were defined.