Today we live in a world in which "information is power" , and its proper exploitation and use are essential for the success of companies, especially when we talk about personal information. Unfortunately, numerous problems arise in the process of its collection, distribution, sharing, security and use of that information: could Blockchain-based technology be the expected remedy? In this article we will try to explain how Blockchain and Big Data are two complementary technologies, and we will show how the blockchain can help in the transformation of information storage for its subsequent analysis through BigData.
Undoubtedly, BigData allows intelligent information management to be put at the service of organizations, so that they can offer better products and services to their customers based on the conclusions obtained with it. However, despite its undoubted advantages, BigData technology must deal with many challenges related to the ownership, use, access and distribution of the data it handles from its clients. For example:
When a user provides personal information to a company, do they still own that information?
How will organizations ensure that my information is not shared with a third party if I don't want to? Who will be able to access that information?
How can organizations ensure that my information is not used for purposes other than those to which I have consented? How can I know what it will be used for?
Can organizations keep the source of their data anonymous?
Asking ourselves this type of question should be more and more normal, especially when it is more and more frequent to read news related to fraudulent and unauthorized uses of customers' personal information by certain companies. Dealing with this undoubtedly represents a challenge for many organizations, as users increasingly demand to have true control over the information they share with them. And that challenge can turn, why not, into a business opportunity for those companies that want to offer in their products or services a true guarantee on the good uses in the processing of their clients' information, thus adding value differential.
Blockchain is a new technology that allows information to be shared in a distributed and decentralized manner, and thanks to the communications protocol it implements, the transactions of this data are cryptographically protected, so that its immutability and transparency are guaranteed. Its main advantage is that it is a decentralized network, where all members share all the information but no one controls the information it contains, ensuring that all participants work properly, so that corrupt data in one participant cannot enter. to the chain because they will not match the equivalent data that the rest of the participants have.
The use of Blockchain as a data layer in Big Data analytics therefore provides benefits such as security, anonymization and immutability. The data stored in the Blockchain is already verified and is usually of high quality for analysis. It is a single source of truth that is extremely difficult to corrupt or lose, and due to its decentralized nature, it allows each entity or individual to have control of all their data without the need for a third party to guard it.
That is why Blockchain technology can respond to many of the problems mentioned above related to the use of BigData, so that the combination of both technologies allows the verification of transferable data to be perfect.
If you look at it superficially, Blockchain and Big Data do not seem to correlate. However, as I say, its combined use can become the perfect integration to guarantee the protection of any database. Next I will explain the advantages of this synergistic union.
Advantages of the combination of Blockchain and Big Data
We already know that Blockchain is a technology that provides us with integrity, transparency, traceability and security of the information contained in its ledger (known as " ledger "), but it does not offer anything for the analysis of said information. That is where Big Data technology and its analysis tools can add value, so that by working together, the full potential and benefits of both technologies can be observed. Among the potentialities offered by this integration, we can highlight the following:
1. Blockchain + BigData to guarantee Security
Blockchain is still a "special" database, so it can admit any type of digitized information in its block chain. That is why the information contained is likely to be analyzed under BigData approaches. And the intrinsic security features that Blockchain provides make the combination of both technologies the ideal solution when what is sought is security + intelligence/analytics on large volumes of data. In this line there are already several health and pharmacy initiatives and projects analyzing their possibilities. As an example, it is being applied to aid medical and veterinary diagnosis, where confidential patient data is handled (so it must be guaranteed that this data is kept safe): In addition to providing a single repository of information with restricted access, certain Computer Vision and AI techniques can be applied to some of this data (for example, X-rays, ultrasounds, MRIs, etc.) to help identify certain pathologies. It is in these use cases where the security provided by Blockchain technology + the analytics offered by BigData is the perfect combination.
Similarly, in the Insurance and Banking sectors, there are already projects in which both technologies are working together, for example in the real-time fraud detection process in the financial sector, since Blockchain could be in charge of recording immutable data for that BigData analysis techniques and its analytical capabilities can determine the existence of criminal activities.
2. Blockchain + BigData to guarantee Privacy
Returning to personal data, we know that Blockchain allows people to regain control over them, so that they become assets that can be monetized. This requires that users want and must be able to control who has access to what information, and obviously without the intervention of a third party. In this way, Blockchain could create new markets where people and companies would be involved in data trading, and that data could be massively analyzed using BigData techniques by specialized companies. But as we already mentioned in the previous section, this use of Blockchain also poses confidentiality problems, since although most of the current blockchain networks offer a certain level of anonymity, the transaction data is not private. so patterns could be found in the transactions that would allow them to be associated with certain people. That is why they are working on projects in which Blockchain would work with encrypted information, but allowing BigData algorithms to be executed on that encrypted information (the 'homomorphic cryptography ' is an encryption scheme that allows the possibility of working with encrypted data without the need to decrypt it, minimizing the possibility of information exposure) thus adding new layers in order to guarantee security and privacy.
3. Blockchain + BigData in statistical analysis
Blockchain perfectly complements data analysis technologies. For example, in 2017, a consortium of banks signed collaboration agreements with the startup Ripple to facilitate the transfer of money between their bank accounts through Blockchain. The main reason for this was obvious: (1) to reduce transaction times, becoming practically real-time, and (2) to significantly reduce costs, since real-time transfers are generally expensive . But going further, the implementation also helped banks identify patterns in consumer spending, as well as detect fraud in real time,Since, as we have said, Blockchain stores billions of transaction records and BigData allows them to be explored in search of patterns, thus identifying dangerous transactions more quickly than with traditional methods.
And in the same line seen before about the initiatives already underway so that people can trade with their personal data, the incorporation of Blockchain to the statistical analysis offered by BigData could lead to new ways of monetizing the large amounts of information that they currently have. companies, even the blockchain being able to become the catalyst for the creation of new markets where interested parties can trade, share and exchange statistics, so that the immediacy in the recording of transactions added to the security and privacy offered could potentially revolutionizing traditional data systems.
4. Blockchain + BigData to guarantee the Transparency of information
Once those large volumes of information are processed through BigData, Blockchain provides transparency to data processing, since the consensus protocols that are part of its architecture would not allow anything to be changed without the approval of all the servers on the network. This allows each user or organization to maintain their authority over their information, and the rest of the actors could in turn trust their authenticity and transparency as they can be traced from their origin, thus guaranteeing end-to-end security between the source of data and the end user.
5. Blockchain + BigData to guarantee Trust
The rise of cloud storage has helped companies collect and manage vast amounts of data. Data comes from diverse and heterogeneous sources, and new analytics tools help companies make sense of that data. However, just having lots of data and analytics tools doesn't mean that the results of an analysis are meaningful: gaining real insights from the data depends on the data being correct. And of course, since there are so many sources of information that feed the data lakes, the many transformations that data goes through to be processed by BigData algorithms and the complexity of the technologies used means that even today a large part of managers do not trust their analysis programs.
This lack of trust in the data not only limits its use within the company that collected it, but also limits the potential for companies to monetize their data by sharing it with others. And once again the solution to these problems can be found in an unexpected source: Blockchain technology as a decentralized guarantor of the authenticity and security of the information contained.
Data is already a factor of economic production (just like capital and labor), and there is a direct relationship between data analysis and business value. This is in short the concept of “Big Data”. An example of this are the most valued companies in the world (Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc.) that base a large part of their revenue model on the analysis of the data of the users of their platforms, in order to improve advertising towards their users. customers. Being able to guarantee the origin of the data to be analyzed, and ensuring that the data handled is reliable by being immutable, verifiable and traceable, is a true paradigm shift. Because yes, companies are handling more and more information, but users also increasingly want to have more control over the information they share. A) Yes, The Big Data-Blockchain binomial originates a facilitating and simplifying role because they are capable of analyzing the origin of the data and guaranteeing that said data is reliable. Blockchain could be a catalyst for data quality and as such the convergence of BigData and Blockchain offers huge opportunities for organizations and consumers.