By Matheus Darós Pagani
CEO of 4CADIA Foundation
A large-scale attack on the Internet could bring catastrophic proportions to the global market. Not long ago, Lloyd’s of London estimated that an attack of global proportions would generate a loss of about $115 billion. This is the same damage that Hurricane Katrina caused to the United States.
How to protect yourself in this world?
Today’s technologies are not prepared to prevent and combat this type of attack. If we look at recent history, the answer is not encouraging: the numbers of attacks suffered by companies that head the virtual market, such as Google and Facebook, are constantly rising, as well as some other notorious cases, such as the attack suffered by the British Conservative Part y weeks before the elections in the country.
Cyber attacks have become increasingly complex due to the creation of more sophisticated malware and the emergence of professional criminal organizations. These groups act to steal valuable data through the use of advanced ransomware techniques or disrupt commercial operations through Distributed Denial of Service (DDos) attacks.
Despite the large amount of money invested in the current market (it moves alone US$173 bi), already known problems. For example, 70% of hacker attacks take place at network endpoint s, despite the increasing care taken to this deficiency in recent years.
This means that this market still needs a more robust strategy and more advanced methods to solve these cyber security problems. More and more people are becoming convinced that the blockchain is part of this solution.
Why blockchain
The blockchain’s unchanging information chaining structure makes it ideal for building systems with maximum care in cyber security. The blockchain can improve cyber defense since it can be used to prevent fraudulent activities. Through consensus mechanisms among all network participants, any node can detect data tampering, thus ensuring transparency, auditability, data privacy and operational resilience.
Confidentiality
Data privacy concerns are common in distributed network applications. Protecting network access is critical to shielding data access, so it is necessary to implement authentication and authorization controls, as is the case with other technologies. Although the blockchain was created without this type of specific control, given its public nature, it is possible to store data in its encrypted form, or simply a hash proof of the data when necessary. In the case of the public blockchain, with read and write access allowed to everyone, the control of data access will take place at the level of each user. Security is guaranteed by the cryptography and the decentralization of the network.
An example is the EOSIO protocol, which allows authorization and authentication processes to be handled by the users themselves. This means that passwords and sensitive data are kept in the user’s own custody, decentralizing the process. Another advantage is that this protocol is open-source.
Another example is the NuCypher network, that provides Proxy Re-encryption capabilities for many use cases, like managing dynamic access control between anonymous users, handling encryption of stored secrets, processing secure remote tasks, and much more. NuCypher uses a staking mechanism to enforce enforce security using cryptoeconomy.
Integrity
Maintaining data consistency and ensuring data integrity throughout the entire life cycle is crucial in information systems. Data encryption, hash comparison and the use of digital signature are some of the ways to ensure the integrity of the information being recorded in each block. They work regardless of the stage the data is at — in transit, at rest or in storage. The immutability and traceability characteristics of the blockchain provide a means of ensuring this.
Availability
The distributed character of the blockchain makes DDoS attacks very expensive. They become expensive as they try to dominate the network with large volumes of small transactions, or in the case of the recent Ethereum DDoS attacks, actions with disproportionately low gas costs. Decentralization and peer-to-peer network features make it harder to stop than conventional distributed application architectures (such as client-server), but in counterbalance it financially discourages this type of attack.
The future begins now
Blockchain has a resilience and real-time transformation capability that traditional cyber security methods simply do not have. Moreover, it can be easily integrated with technologies such as the cloud, for example. Another use of technology in this area can be in the use of smart contracts — check here for the topic.
All this can be done at very low comparative costs. According to a study on fintechs by Santander, the standard use of blockchain in the financial system could reduce spending in the sector by between US$15–20 billion worldwide. This is certainly a significant advantage for technology.
Reflecting on the changes that the world of cyber security must undergo is especially timely now during Covid-19. We are in a period of transformation never before seen, in which digital interactions are rapidly gaining in volume.
This means that, often without knowing it, we are delivering more and more data to centralized information systems under the illusion that we are protected, while the evidence indicates that we really are not. Both entrepreneurs and investors, but also the general public of users, (and indeed the general public) must be aware of these threats. After all, the number is likely to grow from this year on.
Instead of investing in obsolete technologies and failures, why not invest in blockchain?
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
