Application of Information Technology (IT) in the domain of Human Resource Management (HRM) systems is a sine qua non for any organization for successfully adopting and implementing Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0). However, these systems are required to ensure non-biased, efficient, transparent and secure environment. Blockchain, a technology based on distributed digital ledgers, can help facilitate the process of successfully effectuating these specifications. A detailed literature review has been conducted to identify the current status of usage of Information Technology in the domain of Human Resource Management and how Blockchain can help achieve a smart, cost-effective, efficient, transparent and secure factory management system. A Blockchain based Recruitment Management System (BcRMS) as well as Blockchain based Human Resource Management System (BcHRMS) algorithm have been proposed. From the analysis of the results obtained through the case study, it is evident that the proposed system holds definite advantages compared to the existing recruitment systems. Future research directions have also been identified and advocated.

The current healthcare sector is facing difficulty in satisfying the growing issues, expenses, and heavy regulation of quality treatment. Surely, electronic medical records (EMRs) and protected health information (PHI) are highly sensitive, personally identifiable information (PII). However, the sharing of EMRs, enhances overall treatment quality. A distributed ledger (blockchain) technology, embedded with privacy and security by architecture, provides a transparent application developing platform. Privacy, security, and lack of confidence among stakeholders are the main downsides of extensive medical collaboration. This study, therefore, utilizes the transparency, security, and efficiency of blockchain technology to establish a collaborative medical decision-making scheme. This study considers the experience, skill, and collaborative success rate of four key stakeholders (patient, cured patient, doctor, and insurance company) in the healthcare domain to propose a local reference-based consortium blockchain scheme, and an associated consensus gathering algorithm, proof-of-familiarity (PoF). Stakeholders create a transparent and tenable medical decision to increase the interoperability among collaborators through PoF. A prototype of PoF is tested with multichain 2.0, a blockchain implementing framework. Moreover, the privacy of identities, EMRs, and decisions are preserved by two-layer storage, encryption, and a timestamp storing mechanism. Finally, superiority over existing schemes is identified to improve personal data (PII) privacy and patient-centric outcomes research (PCOR).

Secure data distribution is critical for data accountability. Surveillance caused privacy breaching incidents have already questioned existing personal data collection techniques. Organizations assemble a huge amount of personally identifiable information (PII) for data-driven market analysis and prediction. However, the limitation of data tracking tools restricts the detection of exact data breaching points. Blockchain technology, an ‘immutable’ distributed ledger, can be leveraged to establish a transparent data auditing platform. However, Art. 42 and Art. 25 of general data protection regulation (GDPR) demands ‘right to forget’ and ‘right to erase’ of personal information, which goes against the immutability of blockchain technology. This paper proposes a GDPR complied decentralized and trusted PII sharing and tracking scheme. Proposed blockchain based personally identifiable information management system (BcPIIMS) demonstrates data movement among GDPR entities (user, controller and processor). Considering GDPR limitations, BcPIIMS used off-the-chain data storing architecture. A prototype was created to validate the proposed architecture using multichain. The use of off-the-chain storage reduces individual block size. Additionally, private blockchain also limits personal data leaking by collecting fast approval from restricted peers. This study presents personal data sharing, deleting, modifying and tracking features to verify the privacy of proposed blockchain based personally identifiable information management system.

The immutability of the blockchain technology facilitates it to establish a general consensus in a trustless environment, enabling a wide range of new applications, including distributed general-purpose data management and digital data sharing marketplace. This immutability, however, presents disadvantages for the blockchain technology, when it is used in other areas where the modification of data in blockchain is demanded. In this study, we propose a method for building modifiable blockchains in decentralized public network. To be specific, in computing the hash value of the block, the proposed method uses truncated hash values (these are called ‘target values’ in this paper) of the transactions that are modifiable upon future requests, instead of transactions themselves. By doing so, the proposed method provides an opportunity to modify those transactions by making truncated hash values of modified versions equal to their original target values. The proposed method uses several cryptographic techniques to prevent the modification of the transaction from being performed for malicious purposes, and a multichain structure to improve the efficiency in transaction modification. By accommodating the modification feature to the blockchain, proposed architecture complies to key demands of the data protection regulations such as ‘right to rectification’, ‘right to withdraw consent’, and ‘right to be forgotten’, et cetera. In addition, detailed threat analysis demonstrates that the proposed truncated hash-based modification is sufficiently secure to open up a wide range of new blockchain based services through added modifiability feature.