How does blockchain technology make website access management more secure?

2024-01-02

It is important to remember that protecting enterprise data goes beyond the scope of blockchain.

Just as systemic blood circulation is crucial for human function, the flow of information in modern enterprises is also crucial for their effective operation. Regardless of industry, scale, and nature of products or services, internal and external information sharing is an important driving factor for organizational performance. By consistently obtaining the right type of information at the right time, even in turbulent times of change, businesses can maintain basic operations. The current business environment is characterized by rapid changes. However, exposing information that helps operate businesses to the wrong entities may lead to potential risks for these businesses.

You may have heard of a large-scale data breach on Marriott International's internet recently, resulting in the theft of personal data of 500 million hotel guests. It is estimated that the company suffered losses between $200 million and $1 billion as a result of this invasion, but any current estimates seem inaccurate and immature. As many other companies are also concerned about the costs caused by security vulnerabilities, ensuring the need for enterprise network security is crucial for the enterprise until the enterprise architecture is fully digitized. A potential new solution to enhance data security and authorization is blockchain identity management.

Understand the needs of identity and access management

As any action or process within an organization is initiated and driven by information, timely access to this information by relevant entities is crucial for efficient operations. Effective identity and access management means providing the right information to the right people at the right time. This means that when specific activities need to be carried out, only enough information is provided to employees and partners, that's all. For example, a customer service manager who must interact with customers to respond to complaints, feedback, and inquiries from different customers needs to access ID and contact information (such as name, email address, and phone number) as well as specific product information (such as product ID), order date, purchase location, etc.

At the same time, the marketing supervisor only needs demographic information such as age, geographic region, gender, etc. for market research and analysis data, without knowing personal information such as ID card and contact information. Effective access management means providing customer service executives and marketing executives with the exact amount of information they need, rather than any irrelevant excess information. These regulations prevent the possibility of people obtaining information beyond what is needed, thereby making it possible for such information to be used for unethical purposes.

As competition between enterprises reaches a high level and becomes increasingly fierce, corporate espionage is becoming a greater threat than ever before. Failure to protect enterprise systems from external entity access may turn successful business strategies into ineffective strategies, as competitors can plan countermeasures. Therefore, the most important thing is to limit access to sensitive organizational information to a few relevant members, rather than allowing access solely based on vertical qualifications and ignoring functional relevance.

Loose and vague security measures often double the damage caused by network attacks targeting specific vertical domains. For example, if the personal accounts of senior marketing officials are hacked, attackers can not only obtain information related to other vertical fields, such as finance and research and development. This may lead to larger scale information loss, most of which can be easily avoided. Therefore, both large organizations and those aimed at becoming large organizations need to carefully examine and handle identity and access management. In order to protect enterprise wide identity and access management systems, enterprises must follow certain best practices when planning their data and access security measures.

Implement effective identity and access management

Business and security leaders should understand that a dynamic security system is necessary to strike a balance between convenient access to data when needed and powerful user authentication mechanisms. To protect identity and access management systems, organizations should define access permissions for employees based on specific circumstances, rather than generalizing security protocols for everyone in the organization. Therefore, security roles should be assigned to users based on their targeting of specific data sources and enterprise network components.

For accounts that have been granted access to highly sensitive parts of enterprise storage systems, regular reassessment and verification should be conducted. Allowing the account to access excess data in the owner's current functions may provide potential vulnerabilities for hackers. Therefore, checking access permissions and modifying them according to changes is crucial to ensuring a unique identity management strategy.

Using secure methods to log in to enterprise networks, such as biometric access and multi factor login mechanisms, can greatly reduce unauthorized access and identity fraud. Even if the account owner does not take all necessary measures when logging in or out of the system, this can still prevent data leakage.

Creating a formal, well documented security program that involves all members of the organization can help strengthen weak links in identity and access management, or in this regard, weak links in any security system - personnel. Implement strict security protocols and train people to create and manage strong passwords. After all, if the people using it are not united and committed to security, a cybersecurity system can only do so much.

Exploring the Potential of Blockchain Identity Management

Blockchain has been explored by developers and businesses as a security solution, as its features help protect data. You may already know how blockchain uses encrypted hashing, which encrypts data by converting it into unrecognized numeric strings. This makes it more difficult for hackers to distinguish the actual information hidden in passwords. The use of internal blockchain networks may replace existing authentication systems that primarily rely on username and password combinations. Numerous enterprise blockchain identity management platforms have emerged, and their operational models are becoming increasingly feasible.

A blockchain based identity and access management system can enable multi factor authentication instead of traditional username and password login methods. This ensures that data on the enterprise network is secure even in the event of user loss or accidental password leakage. Hackers are unable to access systems protected by multifactor authentication using traditional attacks used to crack passwords. Among the multiple factors required for login, biometric data is difficult to replicate and may be a secure way to identify individuals. The implementation of this mechanism is not far away, as people have already sold blockchain as the future of digital identity.

Blockchain can also be used to record detailed access information of organizational members to specific data on immutable and continuous ledgers. This can enable organizations to prove that data can only be accessed by relevant users for auditing and compliance purposes. This can bring some much-needed transparency to data storage and governance processes. This will also prevent users from accessing sensitive company data unnecessarily.

Strong braking does not slow down cars, but in fact, strong braking can make cars faster because they can stop the vehicle at a higher speed. Similarly, adding multiple layers to enhance identity access and management will not reduce the organization's ability to access important data. In fact, it will accelerate the process of obtaining necessary information when the situation requires it. Undoubtedly, blockchain identity management will undoubtedly form one of these defense layers in future enterprise networks, and its implementation is only a matter of time.

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