Design and implementation of a decentralized document management system

Abstract

Digital document management systems (DMSs) can enhance organizational efficiency, security, and compliance, fostering collaboration and reducing operational costs, and are widely used for convenience and productivity. However, DMSs are vulnerable to security issues, such as unauthorized access, document forgery, and malicious insider activities. Traditional DMSs grant access permissions to individual users, which increases the risk of document leakage or manipulation when these permissions are misused. This article aims to design and implement a decentralized document management system (DDMS) that enhances the security and integrity of digital documents by decentralizing access permissions and using blockchain technology. The proposed DDMS encrypts digital documents using a symmetric key and then the key is divided and distributed among multiple users through Shamir's secret sharing scheme. The encrypted documents are stored using the InterPlanetary file system (IPFS), ensuring integrity through content-based addressing. And blockchain-based smart contracts manage access permissions and document retrieval, ensuring access is only granted when a predefined number of participants agree. We implement our system using the Ethereum blockchain and IPFS and evaluated its performance against other types of DMSs. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed DDMS significantly enhances security and integrity compared to three types of DMSs. While the system introduces a reasonable performance overhead, particularly with larger documents, it effectively prevents unauthorized access and tampering. For instance, the proposed system incurs approximately 12 s (1.2%) overhead when handling an 8GB document compared to the P2 system, but ensures tamper-proof access control and document integrity. As a result, the proposed DDMS addresses the critical security vulnerabilities found in conventional DMSs by decentralizing document access and leveraging blockchain and decentralized storage. This approach offers a robust solution for secure, tamper-resistant document management, making it suitable for organizations requiring high levels of confidentiality and document integrity. © 2024 Elsevier Ltd