Explaining Blockchain

The blockchain has been a hot topic in the past few years, if only tangentially. With all the buzz about cryptocurrencies, it can be easy to forget about the underlying technology that powers it and its other applications. Listed below is a discussion about how the blockchain could be involved with security needs in the future.

What is Blockchain?

Blockchain technology, also known as distributed ledger technology, is a method of computing where an entire P2P network of computer systems—thousands of computers in total—share the responsibility for storing data.

Every process or transaction is recorded by every participating system’s ledger, creating a decentralized and implicitly trustworthy chain of immutable records.

This Decentralized Nature is Vital to the Idea of Improved Security

The concept of this idea is as follows:

Centralized servers are the keystone to many, many organizations’ infrastructure strategies. Of course, any of these businesses could be targeted by cybercrime, whether that’s through a phishing attack, a Distributed Denial of Service attack, whatever the perpetrator has determined to use.

However, with the blockchain in play, the person or group attempting the hack has a much higher bar to clear. Instead of just attacking one server, the attacker now has to get control over effectively the entire blockchain in order to do anything. Otherwise, the rest of the blockchain will see the change in the attacked node’s ledger and reject it—blocking an attacker’s attempt to exfiltrate data.

So, with it laid out in language like this, what do you think? Could this potentially be the next big thing in blockchain? We’d be interested in finding out, that’s for sure.

However, this is all still a hypothetical, posed by Internet privacy advocate Jenelle Fulton-Brown, a security architect based in Toronto. In the meantime, Macro Systems can help outfit your business with the best cybersecurity infrastructure available to Metro Washington, DC area businesses, while also helping to educate your team on the behaviors they need to follow to keep your business safe. Give us a call at 703-359-9211 to learn more.