## 3 Blockchain-Based Secure Record Preservation and Security for HEC
### Proposed Degree Attestation Traceability Architecture for Higher Education Commission  
The proposed blockchain peer-to-peer network-enabled architecture provides a structural development solution for HEC degree attestation traceability, which is deployed on fabric hyperledger. This solution uses two distinct sorts of traceability for the organization: hiring bodies to the respective university and universities to HEC. Individual universities and record-keeping departments contain a minimum of two peers of hyperledger fabric-based nodes that are used to create the distributed network as shown in Figure 3. In this peer node, a single-order node in the Apache KAFKA ordering service provides the solution in solo mode. This service also handles degree credentials or record data block creation and consensus verification. Moreover, the fabric hyperledger uses the consensus algorithm to manage certificate's identity verification and validation. In addition, it is  
Figure 2: Blockchain hyperledger fabric-enabled distributed phases for higher education commission degree attestation traceability. deployed in the node and provides membership services to the institutes, state government officials, hiring bodies, and HEC regional sectors. Although the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) storage is used as an external storage structure for HEC degree attestation, traceability to preserve candidate degree credentials and personal information are protected and shared only among the stakeholders within the permissioned private chain network architecture. This file-sharing system more efficiently leverages data record preservation. Furthermore, the system allows to transfer, share, track, and store large files along with domain efficiency. The IPFS depends on the cryptographic hash encryption as a direct and robust way to store on the blockchain, as shown in Figure 3. However, the storage does not require or permit users to share any files with the selected stakeholders. The implementation of the node transaction and the process of execution are shown in Figure 4.  
Figure 3: Proposed blockchain hyperledger fabric-enabled degree attestation verification and traceability architecture for HEC. The bundle of degree records is used to trigger the hyperledger fabric-enabled smart contract specifically. The transaction proposal is sent to the peer nodes in the chain for endorsement, where smart contract executes the endorsing for the ledger to satisfy the successful transaction shown in Figure 4. After this process, the endorsing peer digitally signs and returns to the committer. The committer in the peer validates the integrity of the transaction and concatenates it to the digital ledger. However, the REST API (used for obtaining HTTP requests to access and use data) runs through the fabric Swagger directly, where the system can GET (current state) and POST (target smart contract) block services in the peer network. Block API retrieves the degree contents or credentials in the various blocks from the blockchain. The programmable ledger of higher education degree attestation is preserved on the blockchain fabric IPFS file storage; moreover, the smart contract is implemented for robust information integrity preservation and secure interaction among stakeholders. These privately permission encrypted blockchain ledgers are immutable, as shown in Figure 4, meaning they cannot be manipulated, and thereby enhance the attestation traceability features for the HEC. A hyperledger fabric comprising the three main parts discussed are as follows:  
1. The HEC distributed ordering service initiates the proposal of the transaction, with the order being endorsed by the peer nodes on the blockchain fabric network. The degree-related block transaction contains a digital signature and hash encrypted by each peer for endorsement, which is then submitted to the orderer service and  
Figure 4: Implementation of block transactions execution process. forwarded to the committer with the HEDU digital ledger.