Verizon and Guardtime collaborate on blockchain technology
Verizon Enterprise Solutions announced it will deploy a portfolio of blockchain platform services based on Guardtime’s Keyless Signature Infrastructure (KSI) Blockchain capabilities later this year.
Guardtime is a software security company founded in 2007 in Estonia. The company said its technologies were originally deployed as a means of detecting and mitigating cyber attacks leveled against the Estonian government.
Blockchain is a technology that has come to prominence in the past few years, largely as a way to conduct online transactions. With blockchain, users have access to a public ledger, which keeps tabs of digital transactions. Guardtime reports it spent the last decade developing its KSI technology platform, which addresses problems related to security, supply chain, compliance and networking.
“Increasingly, our enterprise customers want to effectively leverage blockchain to meet the security demands from their customers,” said Alex Schlager, executive director security services, Verizon Enterprise Solutions, in a statement. “They are looking for proven, reliable solutions and Verizon is recognized as a market leader in managed security services. Combining our security expertise with Guardtime’s blockchain platform offers customers an advanced solution.”
Usually, customer data has to be copied into a blockchain. With Verizon’s solution, however, data will not have to leave customer premises. Verizon said the service will also scale easily and predictably, regardless of the overall volume of data being monitored.
Guardtime’s KSI Blockchain uses security functions and a distributed consensus protocol to establish an immutable audit trail for data movement within and between organizations, according to the company. Verizon added KSI Blockchain is different in comparison to other blockchain services with respect to its secrecy, privacy, scalability, time and ability to move abstracted data across the globe.
“KSI Blockchain uses well-established security building blocks – a combination of Secure Hash Algorithms (for example, SHA-256), and Merkle Trees (also known as Hash Trees). Instead of copying sensitive enterprise data into a distributed and widely-witnessed ledger, the enterprise data is hashed and only hashes ever leave the enterprise boundary – meaning privacy for enterprise IP,” Kevin King, director of corporate communications at Verizon, told RCR Wireless News. “Additionally, KSI Blockchain is the only blockchain technology we see that can web-scale without compromising performance.”
Guardtime has collaborated with other companies on blockchain as well. Last month, for example, Guardtime deployed a new cryptocurrency asset management product, called Silo, with blockchain startup Metaco with an eye toward the banking and finance industry. The purpose of Silo was to help banks provide a storage solution for digital assets.
