Dhiway’s Founder & CTO, Satish Mohan, discusses how their blockchain-based identity and access management solution is transforming cybersecurity, offering organizations enhanced data governance and tamper-proof identity verification. In this exclusive interview with TimesTech, Satish highlights the critical role of Dhiway’s technology in bolstering digital trust and outlines the industries set to benefit the most.
Read the full interview here:
TimesTech: How does Dhiway’s blockchain-based identity and access management solution work to enhance cybersecurity?
Mr. Satish: A number of highly publicized incidents of cybersecurity breaches and especially data breaches have forced organizations to review their security stance. Modern approaches to data governance focuses on detection, identification, remediation and mitigation of the risks from cybersecurity incidents. The technology infrastructure from Dhiway helps organizations improve their cybersecurity posture by ensuring that the data of issued records are made confidential and secure through encryption and verifiable using cryptographic signing. The blockchain provides the foundational layer of trust providing the data around anchoring of the records (in the form of transaction hashes) while the actual data (including Personally Identifiable Information) is kept off-chain. This approach is similar to a semantic restructuring of the data streams making it possible for organizations to have separation of concerns and minimize the risks associated with data breaches.
TimesTech: What are the potential consequences of cybersecurity vulnerabilities?
Mr. Satish: Weaknesses in cybersecurity strategies often lead to data breaches which results in a significant volume of digital identifiers being available for compromise and exploitation. There are financial penalties for data breaches as well as a business might operationally cease to function. To put it simply, data breaches resulting from cybersecurity vulnerabilities lead to loss of trust and businesses need to create robust risk management strategies which handle the fallout to reputation and trust.
TimesTech: Can you explain how Dhiway’s technology helps in achieving secure and tamper-proof identity verification?
Mr. Satish: Dhiway provides a trust network in the form of CORD network and a credentialing lifecycle management platform MARK Studio. Organizations can use MARK Studio for issuance, management and governance of secure, portable and tamper-resistant credentials. Or, they can also use the APIs available with CORD to anchor records on the blockchain. In both instances, the on-chain anchored data is a reference to the current state of a record. So, while a record or credential might be available in a print-ready format like PDF for easy sharing – the MARK/QR associated with it always provides a current state of the datastream representing the record. In this case, even if anyone attempts to tamper with the printed format – the reference to the anchored dataset provides the actual issued content.
TimesTech: What specific benefits can organizations or individuals expect from using Dhiway’s solution in terms of cybersecurity?
Mr. Satish: Better data governance enabling more trusted interactions between parties exchanging dynamic data streams is enabled through Dhiway’s technology. Our mission of reshaping the digital future includes continuous assurance – this is a critical component of enabling user-centric digital trust and meaningful engagement. Secure, portable, tamper-resistant datastreams which are capable of handling dynamic and changing datasets is necessary to create high level of assurance in transactions. The provenance and verifiability made possible by the technology are also necessary for trusting the origin/source of the data.
TimesTech: How does Dhiway’s approach reduce the risk of cybercrime in comparison to traditional methods?
Mr. Satish: By reducing the available footprint for unauthorized access to data, enabling better management of issued records and mitigating the risks from data tampering, Dhiway offers organizations compelling reasons to undertake digital transformation path which include credentialing.
TimesTech: How does Dhiway plan to scale and expand the adoption of their cybersecurity solution?
Mr. Satish: Growth for us is an ecosystem play – and the scaling, adoption will come about as the ecosystem of systems integrators, application developers, service providers transition to a more Web 3.0 focused approach from the Web 2.0 world. This is important because dynamic data exchange is the driving force towards wider adoption of approaches which blend good cybersecurity with data governance that is compliant with regulatory requirements.
TimesTech: What industries or sectors could benefit the most from Dhiway’s blockchain-based identity and access management solutions, and why?
Mr. Satish: The trust network design pattern enabled by Dhiway’s technologies provide the foundation for all sectors where data exchange between parties requires authenticity, provenance and verifiability. In any ecosystem the main stakeholders are issuers, holders and relying parties of digital records. And in complex environments, the relying parties might not always be participating in a simple closed-loop model. This requires that each stakeholder is able to trust and verify the data, including changes made to the data, so that business process flows can also be triggered. BFSI, Supply Chain & Logistics, Health Services, Education, Skilling and Learning, Travel and Hospitality are but a few of the verticals where complex needs around digital trust can be managed by Dhiway’s products and services.
