Any individual who utilises public services is appropriately stressed that, in spite of organisations' earnest attempts to secure their frameworks, criminals may still access government databases and steal or manipulate records. This chapter is an attempt to analyse blockchain technology and whether this technology is effective in supporting cybersecurity. Existing research in blockchain technology tends to focus on finding what this technology is and how it can be implemented for data protection. However, there is no special study on the effectiveness of this technology, regardless of whether it actually protects population data. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to outline the effectiveness of blockchain technology in protecting data and the factors that may affect the effectiveness of their solutions.
TopIntroduction
While still nascent, there is a promising innovation in blockchain towards helping enterprises tackle immutable Cyber Risk challenges such as digital identities and maintaining data integrity. - -Ed Powers, Deloitte’s U.S. Cyber Risk Lead (Piscini et al., 2017, p. 4)
In 1981, before the advent of the information age, researchers were attempting to resolve various privacy, encryption, and security issues in the network that was still in its nascent stage. Despite trying countless technologies, regardless of the proposed solution, security still exists as a big issue owing to the involvement of a third party (such as a credit card processor). Ten years later, after the global financial crisis, Satoshi Nakamoto, an anonymous developer, “outlined a new protocol” that combines distributed computing and peer-to-peer technology to create the cryptocurrency that will be called Bitcoin.
Blockchain was originally the technology behind Bitcoin but has now generally developed into a plausible network security mitigation technology. In less than ten years, Blockchain technology (BT) has seen investments from many companies, stimulating the establishment of a series of consortia. BT is a distributed, decentralised ledger mechanism that enables transactions to be recorded across several computers. There are usually no central authorities, such as a government, bank, or corporation, and it includes tamper-proof and obvious digital ledgers executed as a distributed system without a central repository. It enables community members to keep track of transactions in a shared ledger. After the transaction is released in the normal operation of the blockchain network, it cannot be changed.
But what exactly is the process of Blockchain? In other words, anytime Person1 wishes to conduct a transaction with Person2, Person1 will encode the transaction as a block. The block will be broadcast to every node in the network (Rathore et al., 2021, p. 352). As long as enough miners approve the transaction, it will be added to the blockchain. In the end, the transaction is completed (Rathore et al., 2021, p. 352).
Blockchain has evolved in years and has various versions. Version 1 of the blockchain technology was released first, and it mostly dealt with financial transfers. The blockchain was revamped in version 2 to allow for the deployment of decentralised applications (Rathore et al., 2021, p. 352). Version 3 of the blockchain is now applied to a wider scale, and the shortcomings of earlier implementations have been addressed. It is decentralised, transparent, and easier to review, as well as more reliable, preventing data tampering.
“Blockchain is going to change how people do business, the same way how the Internet changed the way how people access information,” says Matt Lucas. Indians are well-known around the world for their IT prowess and is the third-largest economy in Asia and the fifth-largest in the world (Rathore et al., 2021, p. 352). Though India and China have outlawed the use of cryptocurrency in government transactions, Japan has begun to regulate it. While many people think that blockchain is more about cryptocurrency, but that is not the case.
Through this chapter, the authors aim to introduce in detail the two sides of the argument related to blockchain technology. It is a great invention, but it does have its own inherent problems. After explaining the technique, the authors will analyse the effectiveness of the technique; whether in real life, it can achieve the expected result or not. No cyber defence or data framework can be considered 100% secure. In view of the lucrative nature of cybercrime and the criminal’s inventiveness to look for new techniques, the so-called security of today will not be tomorrow. However, given the lack of literature, it has not been highlighted previously. In the final analysis, this chapter concludes that despite some of the blockchains' basic functions are to provide data confidentiality, integrity, and availability, just like other systems, organisations that use the blockchain in their technical infrastructure still need to adopt network security controls and standards in order to protect its organisation from external attacks.
TopHow The Cyber Security Threat Landscape Is Changing
Cybersecurity has a history of 20 years, but in the past five years, defenders have to protect themselves against potential vulnerabilities (such as terabytes of DDoS attacks, advanced social engineering, crypto-ransomware, zero-day exploits and multi-vector malware) (Gupta, 2018).