Redefining Blockchain Security

In our previous articles, Blockchain In Healthcare, Blockchain in Education and Blockchain in Real Estate we have defined the key features of Blockchain and what Blockchain is. One can get a clear picture of the key benefits of this new coming technology. But to brief it here, a Blockchain, as its name clearly implies, is a chain of digital “blocks” of data that contain records of transactions. Each block is connected to all of the other blocks before and after that block. This connection makes it difficult to ruin or tamper with a single record because a hacker would need to amend the block containing that record as well as those consistent to it to avoid detection. Considering this property alone might not seem like much of a deterrence, but Blockchain has a quite long list of inherent characteristics that provide additional means of security.

There has always been conflicting about any new coming technology and its pros and cons. So it goes for the Blockchain technology. Proponents of the distributed ledger technology known as Blockchain consider it to be one of the best ways to secure and authenticate transactions. Not keeping a general perspective, but hearing that anything is the “best” immediately makes us go sceptical about it. How exactly does Blockchain Technology provide more security than traditional transaction processes or traditional record keeping structures? Let’s take a look.

Security of Blockchain Database

The records on a Blockchain database or network are secured through cryptography. Network participants and nodes have their own private keys that are assigned to the transactions they make and act as their authentic personal digital signature. If a record of any transaction is altered, the signature will become completely invalid and the peer network will know right away that some unauthentic update or tempering has happened.

Unfortunately for those ambitious unethical technical, Blockchains are decentralized and distributed across peer-to-peer networks just like a distributed database that is continually updated and kept in sync. Because they aren’t confined to a central location, Blockchain doesn’t have a single point of failure and cannot be tampered from a single computer. It would require massive amounts of computing power to access and mould every instance (or at least a 51 per cent majority) of a certain Blockchain transaction and alter them all at the same time.

All this can ensure proper levels of security. As a matter of fact, the bigger your network, more tamper-resistant your Blockchain will be.

Private and Public Blockchain

Depending on the needs of an organisation, they can choose from Private and Public Blockchain networks. The difference in these is, for Public Blockchain network computers connected to the public internet and easy accessibility are used to validate transactions and bundle these public computers into blocks to add to the ledger. Any computer or device connected to the internet can easily and actively join the party. Private Blockchain, on the other hand, allows only the known organization to join. Together these private organizations comprise a member only “Business network”.

It is quite obvious from the nodes comprising either the Public or Private network that which will have a better security feature and which will be more prone to be tampered or hacked. A public network, considering how it is made up, may not be the right choice for an enterprise. Whereas for an open library, it may be the best-suited option. Considering an organization, the better option would be always a private network with access credentials to every individual so as they know exactly who are they dealing with.

How Secure is Blockchain?

In the above explanation about types of Blockchain network, one can easily decide which category of the Blockchain network will satisfy his needs and requirement in the most efficient way. But the question that arises is if there is a distributed system holding all the records, how to remove any jeopardy? In case of any conflicting record, how to decide which is the most reliable data? Past has seen many such examples where apart from all the security being implemented and all major steps taken. There have been cases of highly secure Blockchain networks being hacked and data being compromised resulting in huge loses.

Conclusion

Considering the above examples and all that Blockchain can offer, we can easily say that Blockchain is the new coming technology and will surely see success. But it is a great power and in wrong hands could easily result in catastrophic results. Consider the situation where a group of people have more than 50% control on the miner of Blockchain network. This will make them the game changer and they can direct things the way they want.

So it becomes of utmost importance to develop, implement and maintain a highly secure and glitch free network for proper functionality. Considering this, we can easily conclude that we need to properly define the security of Blockchain to enjoy the power it possesses.