Cybersecurity and Why Blockchain is set to revolutionize it
Cyber-security is a major concern for various organizations in today’s digital age. According to Cisco’s 2017 annual report on cyber-security, 20% of the organizations surveyed had had significant data breaches in the past year. This led to lose in revenues as well as opportunities. Data remains the major target for attackers. Microsoft predicts that by 2020, data volumes will be 50 times what they are today. 111 billion new software codes are produced every year. This translates to billions of vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit. This is true when developers bypass security protocols in the rush to release the codes. A research by cybersecurity ventures had the following prediction. Cybercrime damages will rise in cost from $3 trillion in 2015 to $6 trillion in 2021. This is the greatest economic transfer of wealth ever seen.
Every sector of the economy faces cyber-security threats. This include- healthcare, finance, data security, insurance, mobile and app development among others. The threats are widespread and complex in nature. Distributed Denial of Services, is now used to mask other attacks like malware implantation and data breaches among others. 87% of companies rely on their employees to use their devices in accessing business apps. This move increases productivity by 34% and savings by $350-$1,300 per year per employee. In instances where “bring your own device (BYOD)” does not meet security measures for abating attacks, it becomes another gateway for cyber attacks. The same applies to the internet of things (IoT) which is projected to exceed 200 billion by 2020. Oversights in these systems give attackers easy time in bypassing systems and launching attacks. Human vulnerabilities are being exploited through phishing as well as email spam. Consider the widespread adoption of cloud-based technologies across the business divide. There is a resultant increase in complexity of infrastructure with cloud that leads to more vulnerability.
Cybersecurity companies have not been remiss at their work. According to Gartner, 2017 alone saw companies spend $86.4 billion in cybersecurity. This didn’t include IoT, Industrial Control Systems security, industrial IoT, automotive security among other cybersecurity subsectors. Global cybersecurity spending is predicted to reach the $1 trillion mark by 2021. Despite the above realities, many organizations appear to be under-spending. They commit meagre resources in protecting themselves from such viscous attacks. This could be understandable because security solutions in the market can be expensive. This leaves SMEs with limited security options for their companies.
Enter the blockchain technology. Blockchain has three pillar aspects: Trust, security and accessibility of data to only those authenticated to access it. It offers an affordable and secure option for organizations of all types. Just like blockchain is disrupting the financial and insurance sectors, it has the potential to disrupt the cyber-security space. It brings new approaches to protection and cost management. There are already new cyber-security solutions that are leveraging blockchain.
Here are four ways through which blockchain is making cyber-security cheaper and safer.
Mitigating attacks
Many would remember the record breaking DDoS attack on Dyn (a DNS service) that plagued services like the CNN, Netflix and Twitter among others. DDoS continues to be a major threat, particularly for those businesses that rely on uptime like e-commerce and content services among others. Attackers would rent botnets and carry out attacks on DNS targets. In the above mentioned case, the information was centralized and so the attack proved massive.
Blockchain is decentralized by nature and therefore does not have a single point of failure. An attack on several computers will not stop or disrupt services. Besides, Blockchain’s distributed network makes more computational resources available at a reduced cost. Blockchain services like Gladius.io pools together the extra computing resources and bandwidth and avails them for cyber-security services like DDoS mitigation and networks for content delivery. And since many cyber-security solutions charge fees based on the amount of computing resources maintained for uptime and protection, blockchain becomes the best option for both uptime and security guarantee. And this is easy for companies; dApp builder, for instance, would be the place to start in getting blockchain-enabled technologies.
Enterprise Asset Protection for IoT Devices and other critical infrastructure
Blockchain offers protection for IoT and even BYOD. Blockchain’s innovative approach augments traditional security monitoring as well as mitigation capabilities. It provides distributed, continuous monitoring of IoT devices, endpoints, as well as assets that are enriched with tamperproof, immutable and cryptographically signed transaction data.
Sensors for IoT devices, endpoints for critical infrastructure and assets, ensure blockchains are fed with capabilities that enable devices to participate in secure monitoring of transactions. Such devices have the capability to communicate with enterprise-defined ledgers that are based on the blockchain technology. These ledgers can autonomously collect, manage, and analyze the security hygiene of endpoints through smart contracts. This not only mitigates attacks like DDoS, but it also provides actionable security intelligence across distributed peers.
Immutability of records in blockchain
Attackers often want to steal and tamper with records, be they financial or health or otherwise. Blockchain has achieved significant value and recognition in this regard. It is very difficult to pull off an attempt on blockchain. Blockchain is transparent and records are immutable, the system would flag any attempts to alter records.
Digital Identity and authentication
Both IBM and Deloitte are making headway with creating digital identities based on blockchain. The two organizations confirm that blockchain’s distributed ledger technologies would be a great option for citizen’s identities. It has the potential to “achieve non-repudiation of transactions with high degrees of confidence, earn digital reputation, increase security assurance levels, and meet requirements for regulatory compliance. In effect, adopting blockchain allows relevant parties to validate who is offering data, who certified the accuracy and authenticity, and who is receiving the data.” Blockchain offers hope for an ecosystem with decentralized, self-sovereign, secure, and trusted identity for trading of properties like land.
In addition to decentralization, Blockchain works with encryption. Consider the recent Equifax data breach that has had millions of personal information in the hands of fraudsters. Whereas there is nothing we can do about it, blockchain offers better options. It encrypts identifiable information, provides for identify verification and secures data storage. Blockchain enabled services like Civic can help businesses in this regard.
Fair pricing and safer solutions-extra computing resources
Blockchain allows for peer-to peer trading of the extra computing resources. Payments for these resources are verified on blockchain. Gladius.io, for instance, offers this kind of service. This boosts scalability of services for customer’s needs. With this arrangement, the competition and pricing are fairer. This is better when compared to other options where everyone does their pricing as they deem fit.
Peer-to-peer trading lowers the barriers to entry for business wishing to undertake cyber-security solutions. It allows for competition among service providers and therefore more innovation, more accessibility and fairer competition among market players.
Looking Ahead
Good cybersecurity readiness encompasses an understanding of risks and threats to assets and information relevant to the organization and its people, monitoring and detecting cybersecurity threats regularly, protecting critical systems and information, ensuring the organization meets all relevant standards compliance, has incident response plans in place in the event of a breach, and clear business continuity plans to minimize any loss. This concept has so far proven tricky to various organizations largely due to systems vulnerabilities, centralization and cost among other factors.
But blockchain is here to revolutionize the cybersecurity space by providing a more secure and cheaper option. This is because blockchain is decentralized therefore has no single point of failure. Its records are immutable therefore no attacker can tamper with them. It is scalable, cheap and more innovative due to sharing of extra computing resources among peers in the blockchain.
