How advanced technology is associated with Cyber Security? (2/2)Defense by Blockchain

This article is written by Mr. Kenji Kobayashi , Senior Fellow, Institute for International Socio-Economic Studies（NEC Group）

Issue would be information-sharing
In this June the international cybersecurity conference “Cyber Week 2018” was held at Tel Aviv University, Israel, participated by more than 8,000 people from 80 countries world-wide. What interested me most is that many speakers raised “Information-sharing” as the big issue and challenge now and in the future. Dr. Dorit Dor, vice president of products at Check Point, leading cyber security software company, commented about the current situation as “Information-sharing is meaningless if people do not share the details such as the method of cyber-attacks and its context. But this is very complicated work, so that many people share only results such as “receiving cyber-attacks”.

In Ben-Gurion International Airport, where I visited, the administration and control system of both Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) were aggregated 3 years ago and the advanced Security Operation Center (SOC) with real-time malware detection system by AI (Artificial Intelligence) was established to prepare against cyber physical attacks. However the information-sharing is only limited within the organization they belong.
While cyber criminals group are progressing their joint activities through the network of cyber criminals such as the dark web, the collaboration of our cyber defense community are clearly not sufficient.

Outsourcing of Analysis
In this situation there appears unique start-up who is trying to promote the collaboration of cyber defense community utilizing Blockchain (decentralized ledger technology). This USA start-up company, PolySwarm, are establishing the decentralized market place of the malware detection and analysis for global security experts to freely participate with the financial backup of smart contract and cryptocurrency.
They are targeting to create the world where global security experts are sharing the information and making joint efforts to create common analysis engine.
They are also trying to improve social and financial status of cyber experts so that they are not forced to be at the side of cybercriminals because of financial reason.
In Japan this idea could also be valid. If we can cooperate with “white hacker” abroad, we can enhance the level and quality of cyber defense and can cope with the shortage of resources.

Although there is such idea as above, the utilization of Blockchain technology in the field of cyber security is much more focused on the security for digital data and IoT (Internet of Things) because of its superior “Integrity” and “Availability”.
For example, the Estonian company, Guardtime, has developed the digital signature technology based on Blockchain. In Estonia this technology is used for protecting e-governance services and its high reliability is proven.
Although Blockchain is not able to solve all cyber security problems and issues, we can expect much of its effectiveness.

Associated with Society
Lastly it is to be mentioned that the Sociotechnical Security Group in UK NCSC (The National Cyber Security Centre) try to tackle the cyber security problems with new approach focused on “How will people (Society) interact with technology? ” instead of the traditional approach focused on “How to understand and solve as technological problem”.

In this group the experts of diversified areas (socioeconomics, psychology, computer science, philosophy et al.) are discussing daily and contribute to the development of security tools and guidance. Since people are saying “Cyber security is not solely technical problem”, this approach is very suggestive how people (society) can be associated with advances technologies.