The focus on cryptography, encryption and security often gets lost in the mainstream hype about cryptocurrencies. Last year’s spike in Bitcoin and altcoin prices shifted the attention to exciting startups and new forms of financing, while enterprise experts seem more interested in the technology underlying these innovative assets - the blockchain.
Defined as a constantly growing list of digital records, known as blocks, secured by cryptography, blockchain technology is gradually being implemented in nearly every imaginable field. From personalized medicine to air travel, the implications of a secure, decentralized, and public ledger are immense.
Many blockchain startups have emerged, launching exciting new projects and gaining traction in this nascent and fast-paced industry. There’s no doubt the technology has already transformed finance and startup funding. However, the most immediate impact of this cutting-edge technology could be on cybersecurity.
Here is how blockchain is expected to transform online security and data privacy over the next decade:
Eliminating the Human Factor
The most effective cyber attack vector is the human user. Employees and customers often lack basic security skills and are extremely vulnerable to phishing and malware attacks. The need for logins and passwords and the reluctance to train employees or deploy premium security tools has left a majority of small and medium-sized businesses exposed to external threats.
With blockchain, enterprise IT managers can easily authenticate devices and users with distributed public key infrastructure. Every device can have its own SSL certificate instead of relying on users remembering passwords to sign in. Security is bolstered when these security certificates are stored on the blockchain, making them irreplicable.
Preventing DDoS
The structure of the current Domain Name System makes DDoS attacks affordable and easy to deploy. Hackers can use a botnet to swarm company servers and cripple the infrastructure. With blockchain, the DNS can be decentralized. With content spread across diverse nodes the potential for a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is greatly reduced.
No Single Point of Failure
Blockchains are designed in a way that no central authority or single storage location exists. Instead, the data is distributed across the chain and when an attacker attempts to change a single block, the rest of the blockchain rejects it. Every node is responsible for a part of the network which means taking the whole system down is either economically unviable or exponentially difficult.
Transparency
Digital signatures and timestamping ensure every transaction is stored on an open system. Users can use their public key to access the blockchain and trace every action back to a specific date and time. From a cybersecurity perspective, this offers administrators and enterprise managers reassurance that the ledger is authentic, verifiable, and tamper-proof.
As blockchain technology gains mainstream attention and wider adoption, digital security systems could get easier to implement and become a lot more effective. With the rising rate of cybercrime and malicious attacks on SME businesses, this technical revolution couldn't come soon enough.
