No industry is losing the opportunity of exploring the prospective use cases of the most disruptive technology — blockchain. From governance to supply chain, every industry has found a way to incorporate blockchain in its cycle. The motivation behind the development of these solutions has majorly risen due to the issues that had been staring the industry right in the eye for a while. Be it lack of transparency or difficulties in authentication, the blockchain technology has managed to provide a probable solution as it broke the norms.
The same implies to data too. Before anything else, data is the value of the digital economy we are now halfway into. The internet, social media, our interactions, and experiences with different organizations — all thrive on one thing: Data.
And are there issues around data? Of course, data breaches! In 2018, social media giant Facebook invited the attention of many when hackers exploited its vulnerabilities to gain access to the data of almost 3 million users. GooglePlus, Quora, MyFitnessPal, and even the Indian Aadhar system joined Facebook on the bench with their data breaches hitting 52.5 million, 100 million, 150 million, and 1.1 billion users respectively.
These breaches led to a realization. People started understanding the importance of data and how the dependence has blinded them from its true value. In order to overcome the data breach issue, an alternative solution to protect data entered the market, a use case, a step towards security as people-powered decentralization and understood blockchain integration with data.
The problem with the Internet today
At its fundamental level, the Internet has a public infrastructure. This does not comply with the users’ desire for privacy. The network that we call the ‘Internet’ today operates as what appears to be a giant copy-paste machine. It copies information from one computer and pastes it onto the another.
Due to this, when users share their vital information such as identity, birth details, addresses, etc., these sensitive data gets passed on to third-party companies that require it to make data-driven decisions without the consent of the users. Every time a user interacts with a new organization, the user is required to fill in its information which is then stored in centralized databases. These databases are easy targets for hackers, it’s one arrow to hit multiple targets.
Blockchain as a solution to Data Breaches
The distributed ledger technology that has held the attention of the world strongly for the past few years represents the potential to solve the problems of data breaches.
The infrastructure of technology offers the betterment of data security. In the present day, data is among the most important assets in the world. All the major conglomerates of the world (Amazon, Microsoft, Apple) are data-centric companies. Which is why, securing data is the most critical priority for businesses around the globe.
The blockchain technology works on a public-private architecture which is very different from the way the internet works today. Instead of making copies from one machine and pasting it onto the other, blockchain allows the transfer of ownership of the original data. This architecture improvises data privacy in a digital format!
Blockchain technology creates a tamper-proof network of information. There is only one permanent record of data to which different participants are given temporary access as and when needed.
This system allows information such as tax records, government records, and budgets to be public while the citizen and corporations data is allowed to be private and secure.
How can blockchain impact data security?
Blockchain can be employed as a strong alternative to the present cloud and server-based companies, due to multiple factors such as:
- Encryption and Validation
A blockchain-based platform ensures that the data existing on it is encrypted and is therefore difficult to modify. It also allows the user to save a cryptographic signature of a document or file on the network.
This signature can be verified across all the participating ledgers in the network to ensure that they haven’t been changed. If someone tries to change the record, their signature will be rendered to be invalid. This independent data verification feature is what makes blockchain an attractive technology to explore.
- Decentralization
Blockchain does not rely on a central point of control. It is a distributed digital ledger of transactions where every participating computer has a complete copy of the data.
Instead of blind reliance on a central authority, blockchain uses protocols across the network to reach consensus, verify transactions, and record data.
- Hard to Hack
Blockchain in decentralized in nature. A blockchain network is literally a chain of blocks where each block is connected to all the other blocks before and after it. This infrastructure makes hacking into a blockchain extremely difficult or impossible.
Data Security with Eleven01
While enterprises were traversing through the possibilities of employing blockchain in-house, they were bothered by the very fundamental public nature of it. To tackle this, private and permission blockchains were introduced. However, the independent existence of the two kinds of blockchain networks raised the issues of the interoperability of different enterprises and departments.
One innovative solution for this problem has been proposed by Eleven01. The Eleven01 protocol, which the first native, home-grown blockchain protocol of India, introduces the concept of dynamic privacy to cater to the needs of different enterprises.
With dynamic privacy, the enterprises building their network on the Eleven01 protocol can custom-choose the privacy of their network and alter it as and when needed. If companies, users, and governments store their data on a network like this, they can easily operate in interaction with one another by allowing access to someone else for the required period of time.
This innovation adds a new dimension to the blockchain technology and introduces us to the truly wonderful solutions that blockchain has to offer.
The blockchain technology seems to be the ideal platform to solve issues concerning data security, among other use cases. It is not only secure and reliable but also transparent which is an appealing quality.
