Why Blockchain may not be the elixir to internet security

Every architect, builder and designer knows that the right tool can solve the most difficult problems in a jiffy but at the same time, that tool cannot be right for all the situations.

There are a lot of confusions running around regarding Blockchain. Many consider it equivalent to bitcoins although both are different, bitcoin being a cryptocurrency and blockchain is a digitized, distributed and secure ledger guaranteeing immutable transactions, the technology which is used in bitcoins. Everyone believes Blockchain will change everything. And yet after many years of efforts in the form of research and investments, anybody has discovered it hardly to be useful in anything other than cryptocurrency speculations.

Blockchain is more about data integrity and less about data encryption. Defined and applied cryptographic algorithms make it very difficult to forge a transaction in such a way that it could not be easily verifies by the involved parties. It is not the perfect solution for securing each and every transaction on the internet looking at the cost at which it can be achieved. It can be a multi-billion dollar effort, rather can even reach a trillion dollar. It is well suited for businesses requiring strong integrity of transactions and has a distributed environment among a group of people. Before taking off for adopting it, it is very important to analyse the cost involved in form of time, money and efforts for its implementation.

As an example, Social engineering is heavily involved in most corporate data breaches. According to the 2018 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 93 percent of all data breaches involved social engineering. This isn’t adware. It isn’t a malware program popping up on someone’s desktop and getting removed by antivirus software before it does something. It’s a reportable data breach that resulted in a forensic investigation, and likely a very large capital and resource response outlay. So, whatever you do to put down that very likely threat can probably be justified. You just have to decide how much to spend and what to spend it on (e.g., gateway filters, data leak prevention, education, and other tools).

Blockchain may be a great choice in the fields of financial transactions, online voting and insurance. But it is definitely not the ultimate elixir to internet security for each and every business.