Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Impact of
Blockchain: From Coronavirus and Business Applications to Data Security
Blockchain began in 2009. Most people have
heard of Bitcoin. Blockchain is actually the key underlying technology of
Bitcoin. It is a way to have “blocks” of encrypted data “chained” to each other
in a robust way to ensure the data cannot be altered, once its transaction has
been recorded. It uses sophisticated mathematics to achieve this. In addition
to a robust data storage mechanism, distributed ownership is the other powerful
benefit of Blockchain technology. Nobody can monopolize the Blockchain, and all
participants play a role in ownership and authentication of transactions. All
records are traceable yet irrevocable. This creates trust among parties, very
quickly and efficiently, and is crucial for a scalable, robust economy.
Blockchain under the Pandemic Situation
Daniel
Kwong, Chief Information and Innovation Officer at CITIC Telecom CPC said, “As
for real world usage today, I think the best example is with the current
pandemic situation. In general, COVID-19 has been a tremendous driver for
accelerating the digital transformation of organizations, away from physical
workflows toward virtual presences, virtual interactions. We are
seeing massive increases in use of our virtual applications, such as for video
conferencing, remote access, virtual desktops, data warehousing. Our customers
have already been using these remote and virtual applications, but now we are
seeing a major surge.”
China, for example, launched twenty Blockchain
projects to cope with COVID-19, including for infection tracing, medical
materials tracking, donation tracking, and insurance claims. Blockchain enabled
all these to be rapidly implemented, within days.
“Shandong University was able to deliver a
rapid rollout of a pandemic data collection and monitoring system, in just two
days,” said Kwong. This was a system for the real-time online collection of the
health status, hometown information of students and faculty members. It is used
for monitoring the outbreak status in the university. Access levels to the data
depended on varying levels of authority to ensure data integrity.
Kwong added, “Compared to a traditional database system, the Blockchain
approach makes the data and transactional record very robust against tampering.
Once a student or faculty submits the health information, it cannot be tampered
with. This is crucial for management during health crisis.”
Additionally, China launched a nationwide
health tracking system for some 1.4 billion people! This system provides a
color-coded health status, similar as traffic lights signal, for the whole
population, with different colors indicating the health status of individuals
on their smartphones. If this was to be implemented with a traditional database
system, not only would it take a much longer time to develop, it will also
require huge processing power for a centralized database. Plus, it would be
challenging to scale and ensure security and data integrity. It might need
weeks or months to be completed. But with Blockchain, China did it in just a
few days!
Blockchain
offers Tremendous Benefits
Aside from rapid deployment, Blockchain offers
four key benefits to supply chains: Extremely high transparency, security,
efficiency, and trust. Many people think of a Blockchain as a database but it's
more of a ledger. The data is enclosed in the ledger but the secure ledger is
the crucial new technology.
Besides supply chain, medical and insurance
claims are also benefitting from Blockchain.
“Insurance processes often involve a lot of documentation from multiple
parties, and with medical insurance it even involves doctors and hospitals.
Blockchain not only accelerates the whole transaction process, from insurance
purchase to claims, but also removes face-to-face contacts, and physical
paperwork. This eliminates a lot of infection risk. It also makes transactions
traceable and authenticated. The whole process is much faster, more efficient,
safer, and robust, even conducted from just a mobile phone,” Kwong explained.
In addition to the COVID-19 use-cases,
Blockchain applications have also been rolling out in various industries. For
example, in retail, Blockchains are helping with customer loyalty programs.
Other
Uses Cases
Most airline loyalty programs have a single
data source, with numerous members and transactions. This loyalty program
involves multiple airlines, and the customers of those airlines, all with
different promotions and policies. So it's a very complicated program with many
stakeholders and transactions. Blockchain brings incredible efficiency and
security to such a system, solving many problems and simplifying the whole
workflow, in addition to providing very strong security against hackers and
transaction fraud.
Kwong added, “Interestingly, traditional unused
loyalty credits are recorded on the issuing platform's balance sheet as a
financial liability and deferred revenue. But under the Blockchain mechanism,
they are not recorded, and are considered shared liability across multiple
parties. So there are business advantages other than technological aspects.”
In recent years, Blockchain technology has
undergone a lot of standardization, and now there are ready-to-use APIs and
programming libraries, modules, and even applications, that can be quickly
purposed for specific business needs. “So I would say it's easier than ever to
implement Blockchain applications,” said Kwong.
Enterprises generally can build their
operations on Blockchain over existing systems such as ERP, CRM, e-commerce,
customer service, technical support, finance, office applications, leave
applications, payroll. All these can be built upon a General Purpose Blockchain
API platform, using the same generic libraries to start quickly keeping track
of data transactions.
Key Things to Consider when
Implementing Blockchain
While a company is considering implementing
Blockchain technology, the first thing to consider will be, who is going to do
the design and implementation? “Traditionally, you would find a system
integrator to do this. Or you might develop it in-house. But do your existing
staff, or your chosen system integrator, have the necessary skills?” Kwong
questioned.
“You also need to consider what additional
value your new Blockchain application can create. We already talked about a
better balance sheet regarding loyalty programs, and visibility into Accounts
Receivables. But do you have existing policies, or stakeholders, that are
restricting the possibilities of your new Blockchain system? Perhaps those
policies are obsolete, designed for less secure, slower, inefficient systems?”
Privacy is another thing to consider,
especially when data cannot be altered or deleted. Companies should make sure
they have the right procedures to ensure data put into the Blockchain system is
what they want.
“You also need to think about the
infrastructure to support the new Blockchain application,” Kwong emphasized.
“The system will be distributed across many nodes, so you must be mindful of
network latency. Also consider network stability and security, system and data
loading capacity, and especially technical loopholes when programming Smart
Contracts. Additionally, decide how you will monitor the ongoing process and
make fixes or improvements over the coming weeks, months, years. Do you have
the right technical skills to do so, and how will you get feedback and
consensus among distributed stakeholders?”
How CITIC
Telecom CPC helps with Blockchain Deployment
CITIC Telecom CPC has been supporting its
customers' Blockchain deployments with its flagship portfolio of cloud
computing, enterprise networking, security and data warehousing solutions. “Our
SmartCLOUD computing platform obviously can run Blockchain and Smart Contracts
processes, and our other solutions help ensure high performance and
reliability. In fact, our TrustCSI managed security service helps protect
Blockchain applications. Don't forget, access to the Blockchain must be secure.
While the Blockchain itself is tamper-proof, anyone with access can add
unauthorized data to the Blockchain, which is irrevocable. That can be a
nuisance, or a major privacy and confidentiality problem. We have sophisticated
security mechanisms to help prevent that,” Kwong said.
The future of Blockchain is clear. There is a
lot of activity going on to standardize Blockchain in the legal and regulatory
fields. Eventually Blockchain will become a very widely used ICT foundation for
many areas of society.
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About CITIC Telecom CPC
We
are CITIC Telecom International CPC Limited (“CITIC Telecom CPC”), a wholly
owned subsidiary of CITIC Telecom International Holdings Limited (SEHK: 1883),
serving multinational enterprises the world over by addressing their specific
ICT requirements with highly scalable tailored solutions built upon our
flagship technology suites, comprising TrueCONNECT™ private network solutions,
TrustCSI™ information security solutions, DataHOUSE™ cloud data center
solutions, and SmartCLOUD™ cloud computing solutions.
As
a leading Global Local ICT Solutions Partner with worldwide footprint across
East to West and native presence, we truly live our motto, “Innovation Never
Stops.” Being a preferred Digital Society Enabler, we lead our key markets at
the forefront of pioneering ICT development, embracing AI, AR, Big Data, IoT,
and other cutting-edge emerging technologies to transform technical potential
into real-world value for our customers, helping them achieve higher
productivity, agility, cost-efficiency, and ultimately, Digital
Globalization.
As
one of the first managed service providers in Hong Kong to achieve ISO 9001,
14001, 20000, 27001, and 27017 ICT-related certifications, CITIC Telecom CPC
delivers on our superior quality commitment through a broad global self-managed
infrastructure encompassing some of the highest growth markets in Asia, Europe
and America, with over 140 points of presence, 18 Cloud service centers, 30+
data centers, and two dedicated 24x7 Security Operations Centers.
For
more information please visit www.citictel-cpc.com
Media
Contact:
Rowena Leung
CITIC Telecom International CPC Limited
(852) 2170 7536
