Blockchain and Cybersecurity: 5 Inevitable Changes to Watch in 2019 and Beyond
The innovative potential of Blockchain technology will provide robust cybersecurity defence capabilities and a high degree of privacy for personal data. There are many pointers that suggest how Blockchain is changing the structure of cybersecurity; for example, when a node on Blockchain gets compromised other nodes will be notified immediately and would automatically decline such malicious changes. Moreover, the multisignature capabilities of many Blockchain-enabled applications will boost people’s assurances regarding the authenticity of their online transactions. In this article, I explore practical applications of the healthcare industry, cloud infrastructure, supply chains and IoTs (Internet of Things) to juxtapose how security and privacy challenges are handled by Blockchain technology.
Blockchain and Cloud Infrastructure
Cisco predicts that by 2020 cloud data storage will account for 88% of the total data storage capacity in the world. Many experts see the similarities of how security and privacy are handled by Blockchain technology and the cloud. From a cost-efficient perspective, both the cloud and Blockchain have been designed to provide fundamental security that small organisations could afford. We can intuitively map cloud deployment models of private, community and public to Blockchain’s permission and permissionless chains. Most organisations that adopt cloud infrastructure are driven towards a hybrid approach (private and public cloud). A public cloud is somewhat effective for an organisation dealing with high transactions with low-security requirements. Private cloud is mainly appropriate for organisations that face significant risks from information exposure such as financial institutions, healthcare providers and government agencies.
With regards to Blockchain technology, a permissionless Blockchain such as Bitcoin is open to pretty much everyone. On the other hand, permissioned Blockchains are somewhat restrictive; access must be granted by a selected authority. For example, Ethereum Blockchain has been greatly used in a number of private permissioned chains for individual projects as well as larger hyberledger projects. Both the cloud and Blockchain are inherently built for data encryption using a zero trust security model. A zero trust network is predicated on the necessity that every node on the network must validate their trustworthiness. A zero trust security model ensures that a hacked node does not pose a threat to other nodes on the network. Some experts describe the zero trust model as security micro-segmentation; Google is a good example of organisations adopting this approach.
Blockchain Security and Privacy: A Glimpse at the Healthcare Industry
Typically, a Blockchain transaction has two distinct ledgers; a content ledger which serves as the individually encrypted document and a transaction ledger which holds encryption key access to the document folders related to identity, healthcare records and other individual attributes — referred to as key rings. Digitally certified documents related to various attributes are put on the subjects key rings by the certifier, the certifier often needs the data subjects permission to do so. A healthcare provider may provide digitally signed copies of medical records to patients. When such digitally signed copies of medical records are stored on the Blockchain, certifiers will have no access to them. Inquisitors can inspect the medical records when a patient provides controlled key usage based on smart contracts, and then the Blockchain network may restrict the number of inquisitions within a specific instance or session. In this way, medical records stored on the Blockchain are likely to achieve a great deal of authenticity. Overall, experts predict the high adoption of Blockchain technology for the management of health care records due to the prevailing data breaches affecting the industry. In 2015 alone, data breaches in the healthcare industry exceeded one hundred and twelve million records.
In a non-blockchain world, the healthcare industry adopts three models to facilitate the interoperability of medical data; they include; push, pull and view. In a push model, medical records are sent from one care provider to another e.g. from an emergency ward physician to a primary care doctor. In a pull model, a provider may request medical records from another provider, e.g. a request from a cardiologist to a primary care doctor. In the view model, a healthcare provider looks at other providers records, for instance, an orthopaedist may examine a patient x-ray taken by a radiographer. One of the major throwbacks of these healthcare data models is that they are not audited in a standardized manner. The lack of audit trails implies that there is no guarantee of data integrity within the healthcare sector — from the point of data generation to the point of usage. When Blockchain technology completely replaces the existing healthcare data model, medical records will include audit trails that will allow practitioners to easily track changes communicated to the public ledger and thus; improve the integrity of patient data.
Blockchain Security and Privacy: A Glimpse at IoTs (Internet of Things)
The security of IoT devices and data have been a substantial burden amongst practitioners recently. In 2015, a US security company Veracode examined six IoT gadgets and identified some major security concerns amongst five of them. Veracode analysed the interaction protocols used by the IoT systems; and found out the frontend between customers and the cloud solutions did not enforce strong passwords. They also found out the IoT systems were extremely prone to man-in-the-middle attacks. For the backend connections, they discovered poor encryption standards used for the data at rest. In some cases, Veracode observed that transport layer security was not implemented.
Experts argue that the Blockchain and IoT mix are most likely to be effective, which could consequently transform the way various IoT-related sectors operate. IoT devices can carry out autonomous transactions through clever agreements. By integrating Blockchain technology, IoTs, expert systems and large data services, more significant security results could be achieved.
Blockchain Security and Privacy: A Glimpse at Supply Chains
One of the growing trends within the Blockchain ecosystem is the development of sophisticated applications to manage supply chains. Indeed, experts suggest that supply chains one of the major areas of finance with a strong fit for Blockchain implementation. Moreover, this trend may have a huge implication for the security of IoT devices, Blockchain may improve the security of forward and backward linkages within the supply chain. In addition, Blockchain has the potential of tracking the sources of insecurity of supply chains. If an IoT security breach is identified, Blockchain technology has the capacity to contain the breach in a targetted way. Blockchain technology can effectively handle crisis issues such product recalls due to security vulnerabilities. With the Blockchain technology, every product can be traced back to the origin of their raw materials. Supply chain transactions can also be linked to identify users of vulnerable IoT devices.
Based on the points I have made, you can see that Blockchain technology has the capacity to address various security challenges through its decentralised, autonomous and trustless capabilities. With Blockchain technology, each node is accountable for their roles which helps in preventing disputes. When the size of the network increases exponentially, Blockchains decentralised and consensus-driven structure is likely to provide enhanced security. It is important to note, that an organisations choice between permissioned and permissionless Blockchain should be contingent on the number of participants, the value of assets being traded/exchanged as well as the importance of authenticating participants with varying credentials.
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