Ensuring data security the bloc chain way. You may find many enthusiasts among the students, the young professionals and small time businesses who are at ease with what is called cloud computing. Infact with the few movements of their fingers they can send data, make payments, top up their mobile accounts and what not. The availability of internet banking has mad the life even more easy for that growing tech savvy crowd referred to above. However that same crowd is also faced with the perils of data theft, their financial or professional info ration being compromised and the consequent loss of stakes.
As there is a solution for every problems, techies are busy with finding and popularizing the solution for the same. One such entrepreneur Song claims her tech venture Oasis Labs, can find some safeguards for the data with the help of block chains, the new form of cryptographically secured record-keeping inspired by the digital currency bitcoin. Oasis announced $45 million in funding this week, from a mixture of big Silicon Valley VC funds and cryptocurrency investors. Song and one of her cofounders have already tested some of their ideas by helping install new privacy safeguards at Uber, the ride-hailing unicorn whose troubled past includes security incidents.
The issue of invasion of privacy has not only tried to prey upon the financial or professional data, GIS movements too have been found to be compromised courtesy the players like Uber. The new company when approached about the above mentioned transportation service helped the management to add a few filters thus debarring any person with the malafide intent to use the data as anyone might like to do.
Here it may be pointed out that the responsible companies like Apple; though they do also analyze the user data have still devised ways where the data is not compromised in any way.
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While the Uber example is only one such instance of a global player venturing into the domain of data privacy measures the company has also hosted small programs, dubbed smart contracts, which can mediate transactions between different people or companies. That makes it similar to ethereum, the second most valuable cryptocurrency system. But Oasis Labs’ block chain is specifically designed to enable security applications and builds on Berkeley research that Song says makes the system more scalable and practical than existing block chains.
The companyis also talking with organizations in healthcare, finance, and ecommerce hoping to make use of the Oasis platform when it fully launches, probably next year is able to carry itself financially well as well as find enough businesses to grow further.
As a matter of fact, one large ecommerce company is interested in building internal privacy controls like Uber’s, for example, and sharing more supply chain data with partners while protecting commercially sensitive information. Another project is for patient volunteers who are ready to share their history for pure research purposes.
The budding company also has solutions for the ultra-paranoid, Oasis plans to integrate its software with an open source security chip in development by Berkeley and MIT.
Oasis Labs is launching at a time when block chain projects have some credibility issues. The total value of all cryptocurrencies is estimated at more than $250 billion, and venture investors sank more than $1 billion into block chain startups last year, according to market watchers. But cryptocurrencies aren’t widely used and are blighted by scammers, thieves, and poor security. Corporate block chain projects have delivered more hot air and hype than practical technology.
Observing the trend taken forward by the Oasis, one professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, says Song isn’t the only computer science deep thinker who feels that way. “More talent from academia has been moving into the market,” he says. “It’s a new trend.” People from Johns Hopkins and MIT, for example, are contributing to the development of ZCash, a cryptocurrency designed to offer fully anonymous digital transactions, something Bitcoin does not. JP Morgan is partnering with the project, saying anonymity could help companies keep their finances more private. Last year professors from Cornell and Northwestern launched a startup called bloXroute Labs to make cryptocurrencies more scalable, a problem that has plagued bitcoin and ethereum.
The MIT professor also opined that the projects though in their infancy stages may well be a start of an initiative where the crisscrossing of ideas might well be beneficial for the society in the long run.
