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Journal of Cybersecurity in AI and Quantum Computing

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Blockchain-Enabled Zero Trust Architecture for Secure Cloud Computing and Continuous Cybersecurity Risk Auditing Framework Implementation

Volume 2026, Issue 1ISSN: Pending Request (Online)Journal: Journal of Cybersecurity in AI and Quantum Computing
by 

Mohammed Almaiah ORCID profile ;

Santosh Reddy Addula ORCID profile

Mohammed Almaiah : King Abdullah the II IT School, The University of Jordan, Amman 11942, Jordan, JOR

Santosh Reddy Addula: Department of Information Technology, University of the Cumberlands, Williamsburg, Kentucky, USA, USA

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Published: 2026/09/02

Pages: 1–32

Abstract

Traditional cloud security controls tend to treat access, vulnerability exposure, and audit integrity as distinct functions, reducing the ability to be aware of risks on an ongoing basis. In this study, the authors present a blockchain-based zero-trust risk auditing framework for adaptive cloud protection (ACP) called BAZTRA. BAZTRA is a combination of a GBDT-based network-risk estimator and identity, device-posture, provenance, vulnerability, and compliance evidence. The CICIoT2023 corpus, controlled contextual replay, and repeated ten-seed experiments were used to evaluate the following techniques: availability-aware fusion, temporal smoothing, four-state enforcement, EPSS-KEV prioritization, hash chaining, and Merkle-based audit anchoring. Statistical significance was assessed using Friedman and Holm-corrected Wilcoxon tests across repetitions. The selected network-risk estimator achieved 78.96% accuracy, 55.01% macro-F1, 0.964 ROC-AUC, and 0.718 MCC. The complete BAZTRA framework produced 89.44% decision macro-F1, reduced unsafe access to 0.67%, and limited false denial to 0.03%. Ablation confirmed that adaptive enforcement, network evidence, provenance analysis, and availability-aware normalization were the most influential components. Merkle batching reduced effective ledger payload by 98.21% while preserving detection of modification, deletion, reordering, and replay attempts. BAZTRA provides a unified approach to continuous access assessment, vulnerability prioritization, and accountable cloud auditing. Future work will validate the framework on complete multi-source telemetry and a physical multi-peer Hyperledger Fabric deployment.

Keywords

Blockchain-Enabled Zero TrustCloud SecurityContinuous Risk AuditingVulnerability IntelligenceImmutable Audit Trail.

Blockchain-Enabled Zero Trust Architecture for Secure Cloud Computing and Continuous Cybersecurity Risk Auditing Framework Implementation is licensed under CC BY 4.0CCBY

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