By Acronis
Today’s digital world contains a huge number of assets whose originality and ownership are difficult and costly to define and track. Blockchain-based technology can solve this problem by providing global authenticity and security for data and transactions of any kind, reducing the cost and complexity by removing centralized trust systems and making data “tamper-proof.”
Acronis has extended its data storage and protection solutions with blockchain technology to monitor data integrity and validity at all times.
Acronis solutions using blockchain technology can provide indisputable data verification in any industry. Common use cases include property and medical records, chain-of-evidence for court documents, police video or security camera footage, intellectual property bound documents, long-term archiving that could be subject to IT audits, and consortium data storage, where multiple entities or individuals need to securely store and exchange massive amounts of data and information.
Using blockchain technology, data and transactions are processed to produce a unique signature verified by rules of consensus. When these signatures are entered into blockchain, they can never be erased.
You can think of the blockchain as an “append-only”’ ledger with transaction order that is distributed between many entities, each one keeping the same copy of it. Each record in the ledger is time-stamped, is immutable and independently verifiable. Blockchain secured data has provable integrity because the data is attributed to an irrefutable identity, is validated by all copies of the ledger, is always available, and can never be changed.
Already, many U.S. States are working on bills accepting the use of blockchain to increase transparency and protect consumers, describing the technology as immutable and providing “uncensored truth.” Two States have already signed the blockchain bills into law, and more are expected to follow the suit in the coming months.
Acronis has integrated this powerful blockchain-based data verification technology into its data protection and storage products, placing it within reach of any business, big or small.
Acronis Notary and Acronis ASign Enable Blockchain-based Data Verification
With the Acronis suite of data protection and storage products, you get easy-to-use and class-leading blockchain-based data verification solutions. Acronis Notary and Acronis ASign together enhance data management tasks by leveraging blockchain technology.
Acronis Notary computes a unique cryptographic “fingerprint” hash of each file. This hash algorithm produces the same output given the exact same input file every time, regardless of circumstance. Any change, however slight, in the input file results in a dramatically different fingerprint. The hash algorithm is designed to work in one direction—making it impossible to determine the original file inputs from the output alone.
A hash of the whole structure containing all the file fingerprints is recorded into the blockchain. Authenticity of those files can be independently confirmed by any party (even one not doing business with Acronis) that has access to the blockchain.
When you back up your data to local drives or the cloud, you correctly expect Acronis technology to faithfully back up those files. Acronis Notary can add a level of confidence to the authenticity of your personal and business data. In the future, you may want to simply reassure yourself the file is unchanged. Or, you may have, or someone may present you with, a file and you need to validate whether or not it is authentic and unchanged from the backup. Common use cases include property and personal copies of records, chain-of-evidence for court requested documents, and long-term archives that could be subject to various legal or tax audits.
Acronis ASign is a blockchain-based document certification tool that complements Acronis Notary. It allows multiple parties to execute and certify a document with a secure and publicly auditable digital signature. Users can protect their backed-up documents, which are verified with Acronis Notary and electronically signed—all within the same reliable backup solution.
Blockchain-based approaches to solve all manner of secure data management requirements are coming. At Acronis, we embrace the underlying disruptive nature of the evolving transactional and computational world. In the current-day environment, where data is under constant threat, traditional backup is not enough to guarantee data protection. Acronis technology transforms the data protection model. The new data protection paradigm focuses on secure backup in which data is not only copied (backed up), but is also protected from cyber-attacks and can be verified through blockchain.
