Blockchain-Assisted Zero Trust Security Architecture for Secure Data Exchange in Distributed Cloud Systems

Abstract

The rapid adoption of distributed cloud computing, edge infrastructures, Internet of Things, multi-cloud ecosystems, and virtualized enterprise environments has significantly increased the complexity of modern cybersecurity challenges. Traditional perimeter-based security architectures are increasingly ineffective against advanced persistent threats, insider attacks, ransomware, distributed denial-of-service attacks, identity spoofing, and unauthorized cross-domain access within distributed cloud systems. Modern cloud infrastructures continuously exchange massive volumes of sensitive enterprise data across heterogeneous platforms, geographically distributed servers, and virtualized communication channels, thereby creating substantial vulnerabilities related to authentication, access control, data integrity, and trust management. Conventional centralized security mechanisms frequently suffer from single points of failure, delayed threat detection, inadequate scalability, and limited transparency in distributed cloud ecosystems. This research proposes a Blockchain-Assisted Zero Trust Security Architecture for Secure Data Exchange in Distributed Cloud Systems. The proposed framework integrates blockchain-enabled decentralized trust management, Zero Trust security principles, deep learning-based anomaly detection, transformer-assisted threat analytics, graph neural trust coordination, reinforcement-driven adaptive security optimization, and explainable cyber intelligence to support secure and scalable distributed cloud communication. The architecture continuously verifies user identities, device authenticity, network behavior, and transactional integrity before granting infrastructure access, thereby eliminating implicit trust relationships in distributed cloud ecosystems.