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What are the best and most effective ways information security professionals can use blockchain technology?

Blockchain is distributed ledger technology. The premise of blockchain is that everyone involved in the chain has the same version of the truth at the same time. Each block in the chain builds on the previous and each has a unique identifier.

Blockchain technology is finding its way into more and more areas of global business, yet the use of blockchain in the world of cyber security is still nascent. Many of the most developed use cases involve financial transactions.

However, due to the inherent security attributes of decentralised, redundant ledgers, hashing/encryption, and other privacy-preserving techniques used by blockchains, security-related applications are also significant. Early forays have focused on identity, data, and the internet of things (IoT).

Identity and access management focuses on validating that someone is who they claim to be, a fact that attackers are keenly aware of when they target the credentials of privileged users in an organisation, such as systems administrators or C-level executives, to gain access to key digital assets.

A blockchain-based system could be used to track identities, entitlements, entitlement assignment, and access events, with any attempts at change, such as the privilege escalation, flagged and checked against policies before it is allowed.

From a data perspective, blockchain can be used to store data in a distributed manner. Today, data storage is often centralised, and cyber attacks frequently focus on accessing data in one location. Using distributed ledger technology lowers the risk if an attacker were to access the data – even if they were to get in, there’s less data to steal than with centralised data storage.

The internet of things is growing rapidly despite persistent concerns about the security of endpoints and the mission criticality of many IoT applications. 

Blockchain’s peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture and intrinsic security technologies – including the encryption/hashing of data, redundant and immutable ledgers, robustness of data to compromised nodes, and use of hardware wallets and chip-level trusted execution environments – bring the potential to increase IoT security.

These characteristics enable the development of networks of trusted devices – whether in private or public blockchain deployments.

Enterprise blockchain adoption in security is in its infancy and several enterprises have adopted a “wait and watch” approach owing to the ongoing development of blockchain technology, the need for significant investment, and the lack of a specialised workforce.

However, Ovum has developed a series of questions to consider for blockchain use in security: Does the use case require a database? Would there be several users updating the database? Is there a need for the users to establish trust between each other?

Are there any issues with the involvement of a central or third party? And do the transactions have dependencies between each other?If the answer to all of the above questions is “yes”, then this is a good use case for blockchain in security – or in any other potential use case.

In the cyber security world, blockchain should not be dismissed as emerging technology that has little value; instead, organisations should consider maintaining a watching brief and exploring possibilities.

Read more from Computer Weekly’s Security Think Tank about how information security professionals can use blockchain technology
Blockchain – balance risk and opportunity for smart security.Risk mitigation is key to blockchain becoming mainstream.Blockchain utility depends on business type and cost.Blockchain – not for everyone, so look carefully before you leap.Use blockchain for integrity and immutability checks.

China‘s upcoming state-controlled digital currency is to be similar to Facebook‘s proposed coin, which makes total sense, because Libra isn’t really a cryptocurrency.

Mu Changchun, deputy director of payments at China‘s central bank, explained the country was issuing its digital currency “to protect our monetary sovereignty and legal currency status,” Reuters reports.

“We need to plan ahead for a rainy day,” Mu added.It’s likely these concerns reflect those of the European Central Bank. Earlier this week, a representative claimed that Facebook‘s Libra could undermine its power if it was readily adopted, as it could reduce overall demand for the Euro.

Next week: China discovers its digital token is capable of alchemy

Amazingly, Mu mentioned that his government‘s proposed tokens will be just as safe as China‘s paper-based fiat.Payment platforms like WeChat and Alipay are to supposedly support them, and Mu promised they’ll even be usable without an internet connection.

More incredibly, Reuters reports that Mu said China‘s purported coin would find a balance between allowing anonymous payments and preventing money laundering.

Considering that China is considered by many to be a surveillance-state (with scholars now referring to its politics as “networked totalitarianism“), these claims are outright laughable.

So, while Facebook does its best to brand its Libra offering as a real “cryptocurrency,” China has taken notes on issuing an entirely centralized digital currency that’s susceptible to censorship.If anything, the two deserve each other.

The global lottery industry generates billions in sales every year. But despite being worth so much money, the industry is riddled with pressing issues, which include the lack of transparency and the growing doubt about the actual randomness of the draws.

This concern comes from the fact that a broad range of platforms use pseudo-random number generators often audited by questionable authorities. This is leading to lottery companies seeking alternative ways to create draws.

To help increase a lottery’s transparency, fairness, and credibility, operators are starting to use the latest technology. 

The Naija Lottery in Nigera, is one of the most recent examples, as they partnered with Quanta to introduce blockchain technology to the traditional lottery market. The blockchain lottery operator will use smart contract-based technology to make the number generation more transparent in order to increase the fairness of the draw.

Part of the deal between the two companies is to bring decentralised ledger technology to the traditional lottery market, especially across Africa and Nigeria, which could prove to be a lucrative business opportunity. In 2016, Nigerians spent $395.5 million (₦154 billion) per day on lotteries and other games, which increased to just under £1 billion (₦ 308 billion) in 2017.

According to a Lisbon Technical University study on Crypto Bit News, the growth of lottery sales depends on a country’s GDP per capita. And since the Nigerians are currently spending a lot of money on lottery tickets, with 13 out of 20 people saying that they participate in some form of gaming, now is the time to build on its momentum using blockchain.

Nigerian leaders are already working hard to build a safe and trustful platform to ensure fairness and transparency, and remove traces of corruption and inefficiency.

As blockchain does not involve a middleman and transactions are much more transparent, this will increase fairness in the gaming industry, improving the overall experience for the customers.

This adoption of blockchain technology in the lottery industry follows a global trend of using the latest technology to transform gaming industries. DAO Casino created a platform that runs on an Ethereum blockchain with the aim to reduce “fraud risk; hidden fees; high cost of entry for game developers; operational overhead; player access to funds; player withdrawal delays; and general lack of trust.

” The company will use the blockchain used for Ethereum to create smart contracts.The rise of blockchain also mirrors the increasing use of cryptocurrency as an accepted form of currency.

This is best represented in how it is now being used in international lotteries. The Express reports that as Bitcoin become more mainstream this has led to the creation of the world’s first licensed Bitcoin lottery by Lottoland.

The lottery has been a success since it launched with Lottoland putting the current Bitcoin Lotto jackpot at 2,040 BTC (₦4 billion). What makes this lottery different is that the value of the jackpot reflects the current price of the cryptocurrency.

With cryptocurrencies like DasCoin becoming more widely used in Africa, it is not hard to believe that cryptocurrency lotteries will become more commonplace across the globe.

In fact, the integration of blockchain into the Nigerian lottery could be the first step to an actual Nigerian cryptocurrency lottery.

Bitcoin, cryptocurrency and blockchain startups exploded onto the London financial technology scene over the last few years, but now, due to a combination of potentially tougher new regulation and the UK's looming exit from the European Union, things could be about to take a turn for the worse for the fledgling bitcoin and crypto sector.

It could be about to all go wrong for London's bitcoin, crypto, and blockchain startups.

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The U.K.'s prime minister, Boris Johnson, who has taken over from Theresa May after she spent two fruitless years trying to negotiate a Brexit deal with the E.U., has steered the country towards a feared so-called no-deal Brexit scenario, potentially causing chaos–though perhaps boosting the bitcoin price.

While Johnson has clashed with the U.K.'s parliament over the possibility of a no-deal Brexit, it remains on the table, fueling business uncertainty.

If the U.K. does eventually leave the E.U. trading bloc without a deal, financial technology companies would lose access to the bloc's single market–while bitcoin and cryptocurrency startups may struggle to justify a London office without an easy route into Europe.


"The uncertainty around Brexit has already taken a major toll, particularly for non-U.K. companies doing business in the U.K.," said Felix Shipkevich, a New York-based lawyer specializing in digital currency and financial technology.

Financial technology businesses have already been found to be moving from the U.K. to the E.U. in preparation for Brexit, according to report from capital markets think tank New Financial, out earlier this year.

"If fintech businesses in the U.K. can’t access international individuals working in areas such as machine learning, artificial intelligence and blockchain as easily after Brexit, this could cause a contraction in the sector because currently, up to a fifth of the skills used by the fintech sector in the U.K. have come from the EU," Sarah Hall, senior fellow at the U.K. in a Changing Europe research group, told bitcoin and crypto trade news website, Cointelegraph.

Last month, the U.K.'s financial services watchdog warned potential investors that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have "no intrinsic value," with some taking the caution as a signal the country could be moving towards a bitcoin ban.

Just last week, the Bank of England governor Mark Carney, who has previously poured scorn on bitcoin and its crypto peers, said a global digital currency could replace the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency–and likely directly compete with bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies.





The bitcoin price has climbed this year, despite the U.K.'s financial industry watchdog warning it has "no intrinsic value.

"COINDESK

Meanwhile, one promising crypto startup has already run into difficulties, according to reports. Nodal Labs, a blockchain-powered freelance marketplace, has missed payments to staff with a boardroom battle underway for control of the floundering crypto company, according to AltFi, an alternative finance and fintech news website.

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Billy Bambrough

I am a journalist with significant experience covering technology, finance, economics, and business around the world. As the founding editor of Verdict.co.uk I reported ...Read More

The price of bitcoin has recovered pretty well from lows hit late last year. But investor enthusiasm for all things crypto and blockchain remains far below peaks scaled several quarters ago.

Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily So far in 2019, the pace of private funding for blockchain and crypto deals lags sharply behind last year.

The downward trajectory applies to both initial coin offerings and venture rounds for companies in the space.Altogether, investors have put an estimated $3.38 billion to work in initial coin offerings and private funding rounds for companies in 2019, according to Crunchbase data.

* At this pace, annual investment portends to be a fraction of the 2018 investment total of $12.86 billion. The declines come as major cryptocurrencies continue to trade well below prior peaks, although they have rebounded from last year’s lows. And new cryptocurrencies have failed to deliver breakout hits.

 Out of the roughly $250 billion in total valuation for the crypto space, roughly 70 percent comes from bitcoin alone.Below, we break out numbers for both investor-backed rounds and ICOs, looking at trendlines for investment totals and round counts.

Not A Popped Balloon, But Certainly A Deflated One

The current crypto and blockchain funding environment looks less like a popped bubble than a deflated one. Currencies are still trading and startups are getting funded. There’s just less money chasing the space.In the chart below, we look at total funding across both initial coin offerings and private funding rounds for crypto and blockchain-focused companies globally:




Cryptocurrencies hit their bubbliest highs around late 2017 and early 2018. That’s when bitcoin passed the $20,000 mark, and total crypto market cap peaked at around $700 billion.

Venture funding of blockchain-related startups was also on a roll around then, buoyed by bullish memes about the technology’s game-changing potential.This past December, by contrast, looks like the lowest point for the crypto space in the past couple years, with total market cap down to about $75 billion.

Crypto bears, some of whom predicted an eventual bitcoin valuation of zero, were starting to look rather prescient.Now here we are in early September, and neither the bull nor the extreme bear case appear to be winning out.VCs Still Like Blockchain, But They Like It LessIn short, blockchain is still a thing. It’s just not the thing that everyone’s talking about.

That includes venture capitalists, many of whom have been outspoken boosters of all things blockchain. As a group, they’ve been putting less money into the space of late.

So far this year, investors have put about $2 billion into rounds for companies tied to crypto and blockchain technology, not including ICOs. That’s on pace to come in well below the $4.65 billion tally for all of 2018. We have more numbers in the chart below:




Some of the most prominent VCs active in the  blockchain and crypto space have been cutting back in 2019. For instance, Andreessen Horowitz participated in 14 funding rounds with an aggregate value of nearly $850 million in 2018, per Crunchbase data. So far this year, the firm has backed five deals valued at a little over $75 million.

They’re not alone. Digital Currency Group and Blockchain Capital, two of the most active investors, have also cut back sharply in deal count and aggregate value of rounds they’ve backed.It also should be noted that the numbers include companies for which crypto or blockchain is a component but not a core focus of the business.

For example, the largest crypto-related round for 2019 is a $323 million Series E for Robinhood, which offers cryptocurrencies but is best-known as a commission free stock trading app.But there have been other big rounds this year for companies more exclusively focused on crypto.

That includes a $200 million Series A for Bithumb, a South Korean crypto exchange platform, and $100 million in Series C funding for Kraken, the San Francisco-based crypto trading provider.

Little Punditry For Blockchain And Crypto Slowdown

So, the data speaks pretty clearly: Blockchain and crypto-related funding is down but by no means dead after the cryptocurrency bubble popped. What’s lacking, however, is much in the way of punditry regarding why things are playing out this way.

The blockchain and crypto camps, as aforementioned, are mostly populated with extreme bulls and extreme bears. There are those who think bitcoin is the younger generation’s version of gold, and blockchain represents the most disruptive technologies in a generation. And there are those who consider crypto the mother of all scams and blockchain the most over-hyped technology ever.

One possibility, laid out by Andreessen Horowitz, is that blockchain will present disappointments in its long march to widespread viability. The firm writes:

“Blockchain computers are new types of computers where the unique capability is trust between users, developers, and the platform itself… In exchange for these new capabilities, blockchain computers trade off other capabilities such as transaction scalability.

This can lead people to dismiss them, in the same way people dismissed early smartphones because they traded off computing power and screen size for portability and new sensors.

”Personally, I’m not buying the firm’s comparison here. No one really dissed the future of smartphones, even back in the flip phone era. We just weren’t sure exactly when all the pieces – price, portability, durability, computing power, etc. – would come together in a package that warranted mass adoption.

Blockchain, by contrast, has some pretty hardcore doubters. And cryptocurrency, in particular, has some real pessimists among the world’s wealthiest, including Warren Buffet, who compares bitcoin to rat poison squared.

That said, we’re still in early innings. And for now, it looks like neither the blockchain boosters and detractors have sealed a winning case.

Methodology

Crunchbase’s ICO data is not exhaustive but does capture broad trendlines for growth and contraction in ICO funding.