The Future of Cyber Security: Blockchain Technology

• Toshendra Kumar Sharma
• May 10, 2024

What simply started as the technology behind Bitcoin, has taken over the world today. Blockchain technology has seeped into every sphere of our lives from banking to healthcare and beyond. Cybersecurity is an industry which has been significantly impacted by this technology with a scope for more in the future. In Alex Momot’s words, ‘By removing much of the human element from data storage, blockchains significantly mitigate the risk of human error, which is the largest cause of data breaches.’

Blockchain Technology is defined as a decentralized distributed ledger system which is used to record data transactions across multiple computers. The reason why this technology has gained popularity is that you can put any digital asset or transaction into the blockchain, the industry does not matter. Blockchain technology can be used to prevent any type of data breaches, identity thefts, cyber-attacks or foul play in transactions. This ensures that the data remains private and secure.

Here are some use-cases of Blockchain in cybersecurity.

•    Protected Edge Computing with Authentication

Edge computing is good for IT efficiency, productivity and power usage but it represents a security challenge for CISOs, CIOs and the more extensive business; thus Blockchain is providing a solution to secure IoT and Industrial IoT. It will help in the strengthening of authentication, enhanced data attribution and flow as well as upgrade record management.

•    Advanced Confidentiality and Data Integrity

Owing to its nature of public distribution, Blockchain was created without any particular access controls initially. But with time, as the technology started providing solutions to multiple industries, blockchain implementations now have scope for data confidentiality as well as access control. The complete encryption of the Blockchain ensures that data as a whole or in part is not accessible to any wrongful person or organization while in transit.

•    Secured Private Messaging

A lot of companies are looking at Blockchain to secure their personal and private information exchanged over chats, messaging apps and social media. They hope to make it into a secure platform with the help of Blockchain and impenetrable to foreign attacks.

•    Improved PKI

PKI or Public Key Infrastructure keeps messaging applications, emails, websites and other forms of communication secure. But they all rely on third-party certificate authorities to issue, revoke or store key pairs. These certificate authorities can become an easy target for hackers with spoof identities trying to penetrate encrypted communications. On the other hand, when keys are published on a blockchain, it leaves no scope for a false key generation or identity theft as the applications verify the identity of the person you’re communicating with. CYBRI is a good place to go if you want to keep your messaging apps and communication secure. It is found that CYBRI penetration testing has given users positive outcomes.

•    Intact Domain Name System(DNS)

The DNS is an easy target for malicious activities as hackers can bring down the DNS service providers for major websites like Twitter, Paypal and other services. A Blockchain approach to storing these DNS entries can improve the security extensively because it removes that one single target which can be compromised.

•    Diminished DDoS attacks

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is an attack in which multiple compromised computer systems attack a target, such as a server, website or another network resource, and cause a denial of service for users of the targeted resource. This forces the system to slow down or even crash and shut down, thereby denying service to legitimate users or systems. This problem can be solved by integrating blockchain into decentralized solutions which can provide protection against such attacks.

We can develop and adopt multiple measures for security, and yet threats develop and adapt accordingly. However, with blockchain, we have a vast scope of ensuring data is safe.

While the Blockchain technology holds promise for the future of cybersecurity, consider layering your defenses with identity theft protection for comprehensive security.