Page 34 - Cyber Warnings

Blockchain: The savior to our security concerns?

by Jonathan Stock, Cyber Security Recruitment Consultant, IntaPeople.

Overview of Blockchain

Blockchain, a term that’s starting to make its way into the mainstream, being talked about in
various news articles and having a big impact on the start-up market with new companies
popping up claiming to be experts in the field.

To start, let’s look at exactly what Blockchain is and what it can do. There’s been lots of talk
around the technology recently, the majority of security events in 2016 referred to this
technology in some way, and all of the experts within the industry have eluded to this being the
next big technical break through. So, the big question, what is Blockchain?

It’s a technology that first found fame through the BitCoin Cryptocurrency payment system, a
public ledger to record BitCoin transactions between companies, individuals and systems.
Simply put, it’s like the building blocks we played with as children; each transaction creates a
record, or a block, which then gets added into a linear, chronological order.

Another transaction equals another block. Each of these blocks, contains a time stamp so within
the process you can see what happened, who administered it and when it occurred.

Every user has a digital signature, or cryptography, to prove their identity so, again, if something
abnormal happens within the chain you can quickly turn into Sherlock Holmes, find out who it
was and what they were doing.

The big benefit of the technology is that nobody has complete control over the records, its
spread across several computers globally, there’s no monopoly of data and all of the users in
the network can have a transparent up-to-date ledger.

Various industries think this is going to be the new kid on the block; banks see it as the future of
financial transactions, even diamond vendors are contemplating using it to sift out blood
diamonds, but what’s the potential for Blockchain within the Cyber Security industry.

It’s already making waves but it’s not making a Free Willy style splash in the ocean just yet!
Maybe 2017 could become the year of Blockchain….

Encryption

Hopefully, that’s given you a good overview of Blockchain technologies, what it does, how it
does it and who’s looking to use it. The main aspect that could be good to explore next with
Blockchain is how encryption can help various industries, how it can prevent hacking on
sensitive data and information and the companies who are exploring these possibilities.
34 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine February 2017 Edition
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