Blockchain-Enabled Secure Orchestration of Cloud-Native Microservices for High-Assurance Computing Applications

Abstract

Cloud-native microservices accelerate delivery but complicate end-to-end trust, auditability, and policy enforcement especially in high-assurance settings such as defense, healthcare, and critical infrastructure. This paper proposes a blockchain-enabled orchestration framework that embeds verifiable security controls directly into the lifecycle of microservices on Kubernetes. A permissioned ledger provides tamper-evident logs, software-supply-chain attestations (SBOM and provenance), and policy execution via smart contracts, while a zero-trust architecture integrates identity-aware service meshes, continuous workload attestation, and confidential computing for data-in-use protection. We map orchestration intents (deploy, scale, rollback, isolate) to on-chain policies (policy-as-code) that gate cluster actions and emit immutable evidence for compliance and forensics. The runtime layer couples eBPF-based telemetry and WASM sidecars with ledger-anchored checkpoints to detect drift, enforce least-privilege, and support Byzantine-resilient coordination across clusters. We present a reference architecture and a working prototype that aligns NIST SP 800-53/800-207 controls with GitOps workflows, enabling continuous authorization, reproducible builds, and cryptographically verifiable releases. Evaluation focuses on assurance metrics policy conformance, provenance completeness, and incident traceability alongside operational metrics such as orchestration latency and elasticity. Results indicate the approach preserves elasticity while adding strong audit guarantees and reducing mean time-to-contain through automated, verifiable responses. The framework demonstrates a practical path to high-assurance, cloud-native operations by unifying decentralized trust, secure orchestration, and evidence-driven compliance without sacrificing developer velocity