ENISA reports on blockchain technology and security
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- Published: Friday, 27 January 2017 10:07
ENISA has analysed blockchain technology and identified security benefits, challenges and good practices, publishing the results in a new report.
Blockchain is a distributed ledger which maintains all transactions and assets and is updated by a number of counterparties. Financial institutions are investing in the technology to automate processes and remove human errors. This may help towards lowering transactional and operational costs by releasing the finance sector from its legacy systems.
The ENISA report identifies that some principles used in the security of traditional systems and in blockchain, such as key management and encryption, are still largely the same. There are however new challenges that the technology brings, like consensus hijacking and smart contract management. Additionally, it highlights that public and private ledger implementations will face different sets of challenges.
To secure business information whilst leveraging blockchain technology, financial institutions should seek to adopt best practices which allow them to:
- Monitor internal activity;
- Automate regulatory compliance;
- Disclose information only to relevant counterparts and authorities;
- Adopt industry level governance procedures which will facilitate the updating of ledger implementations over time.
