Equifax Breach – What can we learn?

Before I begin: If you have been affected by the Equifax breach you can find information on the Federal Trade Commissions site HERE.

Time to think decentralized

Surely this is a strong argument for Blockchains and decentralization. Surely it can be better to have data stored in the cloud, peer2peer/decentralized. Secure, based on a blockchain whereby it can only be accessed when both parties (private individual, lender for example) sign and agree to it? (As in a private-public key exchange). As a result of the Equifax data breach/theft the private information of approx 143 million people was affected. It is the largest data theft ‘haul’ in the history book. Inasmuch as other breaches (Yahoo for example, 500m people affected) however never at any point has the data held so much value, like everyones credit history as in this Equinix case. It is in my opinion, we should take a lesson we could see more hacks like this. As technology is more powerful, so are the attacks. Especially when things continue being done in the centralized agency manner like Equifax. This is a breach comparable to Mount Gox for Bitcoin, (which was a centralized exchange for a decentralized currency). Perhaps the same applies for any centralized entity holding valuable data. Blockchain technology (not just Bitcoin) is now growing at great pace, and has huge potential for resolving these problems. Capabilities in such cloud, peer to peer blockchain based platforms as Bitshares (Graphene) come to mind. It can perform 100k transactions per second and deeply encrypt data, and retain an immutable ledger of every transaction. Blockchain based technology can serve as a full cryptographic ledger to any kinds of business contract, that can be defined in logic; known as ‘smart contracts’. Blockchains are not only for cryptocurrency or ICO speculation, we can do some very cool stuff along with measuring value. This same technology we have now could easily be applied to build a decentralized, opt-in credit agency on a blockchain. You’d only need 1-2 Cloud VPS servers, and folk multi-chain from GutHub to begin with J (and, perhaps one or two AP Asia Tech developers).

conclusion

No matter how secure and advanced our Cloud servers, hosted managed servers, VPS servers, dedicated secure caged racks –If there is still a centralized agency then somone still ultimately holds the key. So data is always vulnerable to attacks, theft, greed, or other disasters from external as well as internal forces. Whether technical or non-technical, or even acts of God. Peer 2 peer technology is one way to overcome this issue, and it’s basis lays in the cloud. P2P is actually the decades old enabling technology behind the blockchain. Despite some false starts, I see –Financial and other ‘data intensive’ organizations will rapidly start adopting to blockchain technology from 2018. The Equinix hack only serves to remind us strongly the existing methods are failing, and we need new ways of storing valuable data (and financial transactions). In 2017, cryptocurrencies and blockchains have been all over the news. Look beyond the hype and at what the underlying technology can really do. It becomes apparent the blockchain is an area with explosive growth potential.