DAO-Based Cybersecurity Response Frameworks in Distributed Clouds

Abstract

The escalating complexity and geographic dispersion of modern cloud infrastructures— encompassing multi-cloud, edge, and hybrid deployments—have fundamentally transformed the cybersecurity landscape. Traditional, centralized Security Operations Centers (SOCs) increasingly struggle with siloed decision-making, delayed incident coordination, and opaque post-incident audit trails. In response, this study introduces a novel Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO)-based cybersecurity response framework designed explicitly for distributed cloud environments. Leveraging permissioned blockchain technology and smart contracts, the framework automates the full incident-response lifecycle: from real-time detection and proposal generation, through token-weighted stakeholder voting, to the execution of remediation playbooks via cloud orchestration APIs. Our design incorporates a reputation-staked voting mechanism to deter malicious governance behaviors and incentivize timely participation. We evaluate the framework through systematic literature analysis, smart-contract specification, and a Kubernetes-based multi-cloud simulation featuring diverse threat scenarios—including

distributed denial-of-service, lateral movement, and data exfiltration attacks. Results demonstrate a 27% reduction in mean time to resolution (MTTR), a 34% improvement in audit-log

completeness, and a 92% governance reliability rate. Cost analysis reveals negligible on-chain overhead at scale. We further examine potential governance vulnerabilities, latency-scalability trade-offs, and regulatory considerations. Our findings substantiate that DAO-enabled response orchestration can significantly enhance agility, transparency, and stakeholder trust in managing cybersecurity incidents across distributed cloud architectures.