Data breaches have become a going concern amongst the users of the internet. With reports in recent times from institutions such as the U.S. State Department, the U.S Postal Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of cyber attacks and their computer systems being breached, the quest to resolve cyber security issue becomes increasingly popular as the perfect technology to protect the data of internet users has yet to be found. Could the Blockchain be the ultimate solution to preventing mass data hacking?
The Blockchain is seen as the main technological innovation of Bitcoin. It is a public ledger of all bitcoin transactions that have ever been executed.
The Blockchain is basically an authentication technology as every transaction is open for verification by every participant of this distributed ledger. Whether the Blockchain can be employed to tackle the problems of identity and data theft over the internet is yet to be verified.
Blockchain can be a part of the system
Vitalik Buterin is the founder of Ethereum, a decentralized platform for applications that run exactly as programmed without any chance of fraud, censorship or third-party interference. He explains that for users to have more control over their own data, Blockchains can be used in combination with other systems but not in isolation. Vitalik said:
“Blockchains are NOT a privacy solution. They are an authenticity solution. It is important that people understand this; blockchains can definitely be combined with other technologies to create systems that give the user more control over their own data, but they can't prevent data leaks themselves.”
Blockchain setup makes for excellent security
Roman Mandeleil holds a slightly firmer opinion though. Roman is also a lead developer of Ethereum.
Asked whether the Blockchain could finally solve the data hacking problem, Roman responded by saying:
“I think the identity hacking will be solved through blockchain because if your identity is controlled by one private key that is saved by you personally, there is no way to hack it, or at least much less than in the traditional database systems.”
Roman continued by saying that all the blockchains are based on the single mechanism and the objects on the blockchain are immutable, so nobody can actually change them.
In conclusion, he said:
“One of the biggest values of the blockchain is that you can't change the values by whim of the admin, nobody controls the chain; it's in short terms.”
Technically, the Blockchain may not on its own be the eventual solution to data hacking and identity theft, but it stands as a major technological leap in the safety and security of private information being passed across cyber-space on a regular basis.