Decentralised data storage will put an end to catastrophic breaches

The most serious breach of personal data in Singapore’s history was reported by the Singaporean government towards the end of July. Around 1.5 million patient records were accessed and copied — with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s records specifically targeted by attackers.

As the world becomes more reliant on people’s personal data, the scale and consequences of attacks are becoming more serious.

That’s why I believe it’s time for the ownership of personal data to be taken out of the hands of organisations and handed back to consumers. When an organisation stores data on either on-site servers, or cloud servers, or a combination of the two, the data is inherently vulnerable. Servers represent a central point through which a hacker or a rogue state could enter.

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Attacks on centralised cloud servers can be particularly catastrophic because so much data is concentrated in so few vulnerable geographic locations. Don’t forget, when AWS servers went down in 2017, a large proportion of the internet, including Netflix, simply stopped operating.

But breaches of health data is as personal and serious as it gets. The Singapore breach shows patient data everywhere is vulnerable. The logical step is for the world to move to a decentralised method of data storage – and fast. Blockchain-enabled decentralised cloud databases, which can distribute information across the network in swarms, are the answer.

Swarm computing explained

With swarm computing, data is stored across millions of computers, each utilising their spare capacity. Each computer becomes a storage unit to create a decentralised network of on-demand databases. Swarms of these computers work together using blockchain technology.

Security on swarm-computing networks can be far superior to centralised cloud networks as the data is chopped into pieces and stored across many locations.

Computers in swarms all have the same ‘shard’ (or fragment) of data on them so that if one of them goes down, the others are still there. Many different swarms of computers hold these data shards — but none of the groups hold more than half of the actual data, so it can never be pieced together without the data entry keyholder.

Hacking into one of these computers would reveal only a shard of data without any context, and, in any case, each computer is encrypted differently so an attack of consequence is virtually impossible.

Decentralised data storage can also be extremely fast and efficient. Swarms are similar to torrent peers – with swarms spread out across the entire planet. This means that if you’re accessing your data, it’s coming from the node closest to you, as fast as possible. And if you’re retrieving data from several swarms at once, it’s all going to come at you in parallel – just like torrents being downloaded on peer-to-peer networks.

A decentralised cloud-based database can also consistently offer the same performance during peak times. But during low usage times, it doesn’t require the same amount of hardware to be committed.

DDOS attacks

Many of the most devastating data breaches are the result of sophisticated DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks that overwhelm a company’s servers to expose vulnerabilities. Incidences of DDoS attacks doubled in the last six months of 2017, and it continues to be a worrying threat for many companies. Decentralised databases aren’t vulnerable to these attacks because DDoS attempts can’t simultaneously overload thousands of servers located around the world.

Power over data

Health data like that breached in Singapore can’t just be hidden away. It needs to be available to share between medical professionals. Decentralised ledgers are perfect in this respect in that they offer a blend of security, usability and permanence. Smart contracts ensure that patients could give instant approval to any hospital or medical professional to access their data. Then when it has been used, the patient can halt access to it. At no point would this data be stored in the hospital’s on-site server or cloud server.

Conclusion

The world is at an important crossroads. The amount of data it’s generating is expanding exponentially, and the extent to which it relies on that data is increasing on a similar growth curve. Data has become an unfathomably vast and valuable resource.

Many organisations I talk to feel that the decentralised internet is a long way away. It isn’t. In fact, it’s here now. Decentralised data-storage networks are ready for any business and organisation that uses an application that needs a database and needs to guarantee performance, reliability, scalability and security.

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A new, decentralised internet is already close to being built. Blockchains like Ethereum are the new operating systems. Companies like Golem are effectively harnessing computer power everywhere to build a worldwide supercomputing system to power – amongst other things – all the rendering taking place on the internet today. Companies like FileCoin or Storj do file storage, just like Dropbox or Box.

A decentralised database is the next part of this story. It offers somewhere to store and manage data so it can be easily accessed by websites and applications, while remaining absolutely secure.

The Singapore data breach is a salutary lesson for health systems across the world. The responsibility for holding data needs to be taken away from organisations. Instead, the data should be in the patient’s control, in the most secure database system known to humanity.

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