Blockchain Security and Its Role in Document Security
Ever since we entered into the digital era, companies around the world are reliant upon the maintenance of digital documents. And why not? After all, digital documents offer much more convenience in creating, storing, accessing and sharing data.
But the number one concern that lies in the overall maintenance of digital documents is the risk of security. The rise of cyberattacks constantly jeopardizes the systems that have been established for documents. However, industries around the world are ready to invest in technologies that are making an impact in expanding and benefiting document security.
Blockchain document security is one of the trending solutions that have been in the market for a while now and companies see a tremendous potential in it. But before we dive into discussing it, we must learn about blockchain security in general.
Continue to read till the end to learn about blockchain security and its role in document security.
What is Blockchain Security?
Blockchain is essentially a distributed ledger technology that facilitates the process of logging transactions and tracking assets in a business network. The use of blockchain technology to establish blockchain security enables complete risk management systems over a blockchain network by using frameworks of cybersecurity and therefore, assuring services and best practices to eliminate the risks of fraudulent activities and cyberattacks.
The Basics of Blockchain Security
Before you learn how blockchain technology helps in ensuring document security, let us learn about the basics of this advanced technology. It basically develops a structure of data with integral security qualities.
The technology is based upon the cryptography principles, decentralization and consensus. All of which combined together to ensure trust in the transactional operations. In the majority of blockchain or distributed ledger technologies (DLT), the data structure is present in blocks and each of these blocks comprises a transaction or a group of transactions.
Each new block added is connected to all the previous blocks created before in a cryptographic chain. This chain is formed in such a way that it is almost impossible to manipulate or tamper with.
All the transactions happening within these blocks are authorized and agreed upon by a consensus mechanism. Therefore, ensuring that each of the transactions occurring are true and correct.
This technology allows decentralization with the help of participation of authorized members across a distributed network. There is no singular point of failure and the alteration of transactional records cannot be done by a single user.
This is the most basic principle upon which blockchain security works upon, however, blockchain technologies have differences in some vital security aspects.
Variation in Security By Blockchain Types
Now, the blockchain networks can vary in who can participate and who has got the access for the data. These networks are generally termed as either public or private networks.
Public vs Private Blockchain Network
Public network as the name itself suggests that this typically enables anyone to join and can remain anonymous. A public blockchain utilizes internet-connected computers for validating the transactions happening and attaining the consensus.
One of the prime examples of public networks is Bitcoin where the consensus is achieved through bitcoin mining. Computers over the Bitcoin network try to solve through a complex cryptographic problem for generating proof of work and in the process validates the transaction. Aside from public keys, there are a handful of access controls and identity available in this type of network.
Private networks on the other hand, uses identity to confirm membership and for providing accessing privileges. It typically allows only known organizations to join the network. Here the consensus is achieved via a process known as “selective endorsement” where only the known users are able to validate the transactions.
Members that have special access and authorizations can only maintain the transaction ledger at this network. The requirement of identity and access controls is more in a private blockchain network system.
The Role of Blockchain in Document Security
The emergence of e-documents gave businesses a lot of flexibility and convenience but it also raised the prime concern of cyber attacks or security threats. Now, documents are typically stored in a centralized database system currently.
Any member or organization that is connected to that database is able to access information or documents saved here. Any upgrade or alteration done to the documents here can increase the risk of previous data being irrecoverable.
This also raises the massive risk of forgery of documents and frauds. But the use of a blockchain-backed solution which is basically a decentralized database, this changes the whole game of document security that is currently maintained.
Decentralization enables the interface to become more secure and allows blockchain document security to be tamper proof. This is because any change in data or information present in the documents will have to at least go through 51% of node information changes. Now, that requires going through several steps of complex cryptographic problems which are nearly impossible to go through.
Also, blockchain doesn’t necessarily have update or delete features making them an immutable solution. Therefore, no data/document is never really deleted and can be recovered from any node.
Apart from these, blockchain technology also integrates well with other technology such as QR code systems. Therefore, e-documents can go through a highly enabled verifying process with electronic authentication QR code backed by blockchain technology.
However, blockchain is still a new and progressive technology that has plenty of loopholes. The room for improvement is massive, nevertheless, industries globally are experimenting and adopting blockchain security solutions to enhance the current document security systems.
