Breaches of Equifax, Uber & Many More — Time for an Incorruptible Identity Ledger?
The American markets were sent into a frenzy. The trust of nearly half the American citizens was shattered with impunity. An institution which had the responsibility of safeguarding important personal data of the people showed leniency with the trust placed on them. Their data servers were attacked by hackers and information was stolen. Equifax, with some of the most sophisticated security systems in place was the victim of data theft. Nobody, it seems, is invulnerable.
Equifax is one of the three major credit agencies in the USA. What happened to the data collected and stored by Equifax is both concerning and disturbing. Equifax had personal data such as the names, birthdates, social security numbers, driver license numbers, addresses, credit card numbers, and certain dispute documents of around one hundred and forty-three million American citizens. This data was meant for use only by Equifax and as the owners of the information desired. But a data breach was effected by hackers in May this year which led to the information of all these people being stolen. The hackers were able to exploit a hole due to a minor server bug leading them to access the data of millions of people. Gigabytes worth of information was stolen from the database and this spelt disaster. It was a severe trust breach by Equifax.
The disturbing thing about this breach is that the full extent of the damage is not yet known. It is clearly one of the biggest leaks ever of personal and private data involving millions of citizens of a country. And Equifax too made a mistake of disclosing the breach way too late for it to salvage what little credibility it could. This led to several investigations being launched into the corporate practices of Equifax, which further dented its reputation. The organisation blamed the software company for not updating and installing the software on time. The blame game continues, but the only losers here are the people of America, whose private data was illegally stolen and obviously exploited by hackers probably from all around the world. And what was the reason for this? A centralised database management system, which, to be fair, is becoming obsolete by the day.
Centralised databases usually store all the information in one server located at one place. The information on these servers can only be read by most of the computers and only certain users have the privileges of writing and editing the data. Since all the data is stored in one server, once it gets hacked, the entire database becomes open and vulnerable to exploitation. This poses severe security issues and no amount of encryption can make data absolutely ‘hack proof’. There is, however, one ingenious solution to this problem, and it is already available for people and organisations to use.
Distributed ledger technology in the form of Blockchain made its appearance in the technology space in 2009 as the source code for Bitcoin, currently the cryptocurrency with the highest market capitulation in the world and now also a top-30 world currency. Simply put: since data can only be recorded on a Blockchain if all the computers (the nodes) within the network are in consensus, the data can be cross-checked to be legitimate. The throughput is low, but once the data is recorded, it has a permanent record and this makes the data immune to tampering and hacking. Any unauthorised changes in the data is not accepted by the other computers on the network and the data is therefore not recorded. This means that this technology is virtually incorruptible. It ensures complete secrecy of data by storing the data in a decentralised manner.
Tykn aims to utilise this revolutionary piece of technology to make identity more secure and sovereign. We believe that a person or an organisation has the right to their own digital identity and they should have the absolute ownership of it; they should be able to decide who gets to use what information of theirs. Also, Tykn wants people to be able to use their identity anywhere around the world without having to rely on physical proofs, which is our primary focus.
Tykn makes use of the Sovrin Network, which uses distributed ledger technology to enable people to share their identity and other relevant information with other people or organisations. Tykn has developed infrastructure based on the Sovrin Network for the end users. Using the incorruptible ledger technology, Tykn wants to make sure that a data breach like Equifax never occurs again.
Tykn believes that the ownership of identity is absolute. No person should be denied the right to control the use of their personal information which can be a matter of security for them and their families. Blockchain technology promises a bright and safe future for identity management and access. The data breach at Equifax is like a last nail in the coffin of centralised data management. Tykn is developing infrastructure to enable people and organisations to smoothly transition to this technology so that they can safeguard their identities and personal information by granting them exclusive control over it. Trusting other agencies and institutions with sensitive data is a risk for which almost half of the USA’s population had to pay the price for. The use of Blockchain technology will almost visibly and increasingly reduce instances of identity theft, misuse and duplication which is obviously what is desired, keeping in mind the massive losses people have had to face owing to obsolete technology and careless management.
