Blockchain and Cyber Security

With the increasing reliance on software and internet, the chances of exposure to hazards and risks associated increase manifold. Be it business or daily chores, online shopping or branchless banking comes in the increase of hackers, and the worst part is, remote monitoring terribly fails to distinguish the two, resulting in catastrophic data breaches, hacking data loss, data tampering, privacy challenges, and data leaks.

Worth mentioning in this regard are the recent data privacy compromises that caused a devastating loss to the stakeholders and authorities. The prominent ones include the Facebook data breach, the US presidential elections which compromised the data privacy of 50 million Facebook users and the Equifax cybersecurity breach exposing 145.5 million U.S. Equifax consumers’ account credentials to cyber attackers in 2017.

Blockchain, the solution

With the scientists and software specialists struggling to produce any commendable algorithm or software to resolve this issue, comes in the blockchain technology with its innovative features and remarkably built structure to ensure a considerable reduction in data-breach. In words of President Acronis Foundation, John Zanni

We believe that blockchain technology will be transformative in the tech and IT sector in the coming years, similar to what the internet did for the world back in the 90s and early 2000s. Furthermore, he states, We started a few years ago working with the Ethereum blockchain to see how to better protect data. Today, part of our storage and backup software lets users notarize any digital data and put that fingerprint on the blockchain to ensure it can’t be tampered with.

Stated below are the aspects of blockchain making it apt for cybersecurity.

Decentralization

The first and foremost feature is the decentralization introduced by blockchain. The decentralization of information is ensured by the use of distributed ledges which is nothing but a distributed set of databases. Ruling out the central managing authority with the confidential records, the chances of the hacking is reduced, as in blockchain, the same copy of the transactions is carried by every user of that network.

Record Maintenance by all

The notion of no central authority and the details management by the network users themselves seem to pose a threat to the security of data, but in reality, it turns out the other way round. With all the network members keeping eyes on the record of the transactions and its details stored in the ledger, the chance of data corruption is minimized. Furthermore, to own a hegemony on the network or to tamper the data, that is altering the data illegally, one needs to include a minimum of 51% membership of the network, which will potentially cost more than the network’s worth.

Ease of Access, yet Reliability Build

Blockchain in almost all of its forms is among the software that is easy to access, which pretty much explains the rapidly upgoing trend of bitcoin and Ethereum, etc. The network, permitting such an easy access also caters the data fragility needs by its impenetrable algorithms. The use of hash codes and digital signatures with the criterion of single-use and totally random codes, the chances of penetration into data becomes almost impossible.

Manipulation of Data Ledger

Another appreciable feature in this regard is keeping the data unalterable data. The Wall Street Journal explains:

Once a block of data is recorded on the blockchain ledger, it’s extremely difficult to change or remove. When someone wants to add to it, participants in the network — all of whom have copies of the existing blockchain — run algorithms to evaluate and verify the proposed transaction.

Easily Modifiable for Software Development

The best and the most amazing part is that the idea of merging blockchain into cybersecurity is actually implementable. Blockchain as a software is easy to modify and develop according to the required needs. This is the key reason why blockchain finds its applications in almost all-important fields of software and tech.

The blockchain technology rightly carries the capability to resolve many ongoing social, digital and software dilemmas by its incorporation in various fields. The apt suitability of blockchain in cybersecurity reveals an evident transformation in the ongoing series of data privacy compromises and breaches. And this still is just an implementation, for there are many other transformations longing for the right time and right attention.