Is Blockchain a Real Threat to Your Data?
By Knoxon Tech on The Capital
There is a big elephant in the room when it comes to how people look at blockchain, and that is SECURITY.
We tend not to go around elephants so let’s try a different approach and talk about it.
If we look at the context, worrying about the safety of your digital data is more than normal. You see weekly on the news how hackers are trying to get into databases to collect data and who knows what can come next?
Data leakage and security breaches are a problem, we’ll give you that. There are companies that use your personal data for their personal profit, as they control the ads you see and the products they should recommend.
But this is not Orwell’s 1984, it’s the real world. And in the real world, people usually try to find solutions to problems that they have.
Same thing happened here.
There is this concept of DIGITAL OWNERSHIP.
What does that mean? Well, exactly what your intuition tells you: you have the ability to access and use your data. To own it.
The more present security breaches that jeopardize anonymity and privacy of data, as well as cases of users’ data being sold without consent, is placing a big question mark over the case of functionality in digital ownership.
To physically own something is easier. Of course. It matches the concept of possession. Digital ownership is a matter of abstraction and of not being able to actually see those things.
But as we said, people find solutions.
And so they found blockchain.
Blockchain is making ownership of digital data simpler and more reliable than ever.
Yes, more than ever.
How?
Well, through block-based technology that first enables easier data storage and data collection, ushering privacy, security, and transparency.
But still, how?
A blockchain, as the name implies, is a chain of digital “blocks” that contain records of transactions.
Each block is connected to all the blocks before and after it. This makes it difficult to tamper with a single record because a hacker would need to change the block containing that record as well as those linked to it to avoid detection.
The records on a blockchain are secured through cryptography.
Network participants have their own private keys that are assigned to the transactions they make and act as a personal digital signature. If a record is altered, the signature will become invalid and the peer network will know right away that something has happened.
Early notification is crucial to preventing further damage.
Unfortunately for those ambitious hackers, blockchains are decentralized and distributed across peer-to-peer networks that are continually updated and kept in sync.
Because they aren’t contained in a central location, blockchains don’t have a single point of failure and cannot be changed from a single computer. It would require massive amounts of computing power to access every instance.
In short, blockchain technology can be robust, secure, trustworthy, and private. Ultimately, security is ensured by solid architecture, secure design practices, and effective workflow policies.
So, do the potential benefits of blockchain outweigh the risks? In short, yes, as long as it has been executed properly.
There are threats everywhere, but blockchain significantly reduces them when it comes to your digital data.
