Secure Information Sharing with Distributed Ledgers

In 2009, blockchain technology was first introduced as the supporting database technology for digital currencies. Since then, more advanced derivations of the technology have been developed under the broader term Distributed Ledgers, with improved scalability and support for general-purpose application logic. As a distributed database, they are able to support interorganizational information sharing while assuring desirable information security attributes like non-repudiation, auditability and transparency. Based on these characteristics, researchers and practitioners alike have begun to identify a plethora of disruptive use cases for Distributed Ledgers in existing application domains. While these use cases are promising significant efficiency improvements and cost reductions, practical adoption has been slow in the past years. This dissertation focuses on improving three aspects contributing to slow adoption. First, it attempts to identify application areas and substantiated use cases where Distributed Ledgers can considerably advance the security of information sharing. Second, it considers the security aspects of the technology itself, identifying threats to practical applications and detection approaches for these threats. And third, it investigates success factors for successful interorganizational collaborations using Distributed Ledgers