Secure and Protect Blockchain Systems
Overview
This standard defines the competencies required to secure blockchain systems and wider digital-trust environments. It includes identifying vulnerabilities, applying security controls, and responding to incidents affecting blockchain networks, smart contracts, decentralised applications, Layer-2 rollups, cross-chain components, and associated off-chain infrastructure.
Professionals applying this standard maintain the confidentiality, integrity, availability, privacy, verifiability, and trustworthiness of blockchain systems. They apply security controls, validate trust boundaries, use privacy-enhancing technologies, assess interoperability risks, and detect threats across on-chain and off-chain components.
This standard is intended for blockchain security professionals, cybersecurity specialists, and technical experts responsible for protecting blockchain systems including decentralised-identity services, verifiable-credential systems, and cryptographic-verification components.
Performance criteria
You must be able to:
- Identify vulnerabilities across on-chain, off-chain, Layer-2, and cross-chain components through code, protocol, and network analysis.
- Apply security controls to protect contracts, keys, nodes, and interoperability components.
- Monitor blockchain environments to detect anomalies in peer-to-peer activity, consensus behaviour, rollup verification, and cross-chain communication.
- Respond to security incidents to safeguard data, restore system integrity, and manage compromised keys or components.
- Validate smart-contract security using analysis, testing, and verification methods.
- Assess privacy and data-protection needs, including PET-based approaches, off-chain data handling, and metadata-related risks.
- Confirm compliance with regulatory, identity, governance, and cryptographic-assurance requirements.
- Record security events, trust-boundary impacts, and assurance evidence in line with organisational and regulatory processes.
- Work with engineering, security, governance, and audit teams to maintain secure and trusted blockchain operations.
- Conduct threat modelling to identify technical, governance, economic-incentive, and socio-technical risks.
Knowledge and Understanding
You need to know and understand:
- Blockchain security concepts and threat models including trust-boundary analysis, Layer-2 architectures, cross-chain verification, and decentralised-identity trust flows.
- Vulnerability-assessment methods covering protocol, contract, network, off-chain, and cross-chain risks.
- Cryptography and key-management requirements including threshold schemes, multiparty approaches, and custody models.
- Security controls for protecting blockchain systems including validator-hardening, anti-eclipse protection, secure RPC configuration, and interoperability safeguards.
- Privacy and data-protection principles including privacy-enhancing technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs, multiparty computation, and homomorphic encryption.
- Incident-response procedures covering consensus divergence, bridge or oracle failures, replay attacks, and key compromise.
- Smart-contract security principles including vulnerability classes, testing methods, and formal verification techniques.
- Interoperability and cross-chain risks including verification dependencies, bridge security, oracle trust dependencies, and decentralised-identity integration risks.
- Governance, incentive, and socio-technical risks affecting blockchain trust and adoption.
- Compliance and assurance frameworks including cryptographic proofs, decentralised-identity requirements, and regulatory expectations for transparency and auditability.