Blockchain Attempts To Secure The Supply Chain
By: Bryon Moyer
The technology is cumbersome and potentially flawed, but it can provide a chain of custody when necessary.
This is partly the role of identity, but identity may not be sufficient without the further knowledge of the history of the item. And that history can involve an enormous range of considerations. How much to include must balance the cost of tracking and storing data about huge numbers of individual components and systems against the consequences of having too little historical information.
“Blockchains provide a convenient means to permanently record transactions, and they have application to the provenance of components,” said John Hallman, product manager for trust and security at OneSpin Solutions.
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“I don’t think blockchain will fix everything, but at least it starts to create that dialogue, because everybody’s wanting to head in the same direction,” said Michael Ford, chair of IPC-1782, -2591, and -2551 committees for the IPC.
Even so, Huntley is keeping his eye on this prize. “We can’t completely prevent counterfeits, and we can’t completely prevent security breaches,” he said. “But we can detect them quickly. And we can track them, find the bad actors quickly, and punish them.”
