Everything nowadays is online right? Banking, shopping, social media, all of them are more and more in the virtual world. Using the internet is not optional anymore, it is vital for the management of society. This means that every service in the world wants to be able to provide an online option for the user. However, the digital world is easy to be manipulated, and, consequently, the guidelines for the safe usage of this tool must be very precise for both companies and ordinary people.
One way we found to protect ourselves online was through authentication. Many services try to confirm identities, intentions and tailor their user experience based on the ordinary people having accounts on websites. And what did it mean to the users? A gigantic number of logins and passwords that they need to keep track of in order to be able to enjoy all the functionalities of the internet.
Analogously to the users, the companies’ main concern in the digital world is to protect themselves from anything that can harm them. And that includes, but is not limited to, fraudulent users, sensitive information leaks, and storage space. Therefore, companies had to create systems to keep track of the information in a way that could help them predict who or what would be a potential threat to them. In the 90s and 00s, companies would spend millions and millions of dollars to have the most recent hardware in enormous spaces to store as much data as they could. However, cloud computing began, and soon after, the companies started to feel the signs of obsolescence.
In a more technical language, the conversation between authentication and databases is sometimes slow and expensive. Thus, companies sometimes are not as fast and efficient as they need and become vulnerable to threats from many ways.
Blockchain is a relatively new concept and many players on the market are still unaware of its power. Even people who have experience with blockchain are researching and learning new functionalities and applications for the technology constantly. Thus, the biggest development challenge is to explore and build this revolution in cryptography, security and identification services.