Making the case for blockchain in your business

Making the case for blockchain in your business

By now, blockchain technology has hit a critical velocity capable of propelling it into boardroom conversations. Business leaders want to know how blockchain will impact their business and when. To understand the potential of blockchain in your business, we have to look at both the industry and the departmental levels.

Industries most impacted by blockchain
Broadly speaking, there are two types of industries that will benefit immediately from blockchain: heavily regulated industries and industries mired by contracts and version tracking thereof. So think real estate, logistics, and government, as well as critical infrastructure businesses including energy, healthcare, and financial services. Consider some possibilities:
Blockchain for Energy
blockchain technology has the potential to improve the energy sector in a variety of ways, some related to energy exchanges and trading and others related to digital infrastructure and security. One of the challenges the energy sector faces is the need for both security as well as accessibility. The nature of blockchain technology aligns with the way grids, for example, should optimally configure their distribution infrastructure.
Blockchain for Healthcare
blockchain technology will improve healthcare in a variety of ways from more secure digital recordkeeping to improved transparency around compliance, to more accessible, secure patient records. As it relates to the latter, the pandemic launched our medical system into the digital world without much heed for previously restrictive privacy requirements. As we deal with a post-pandemic world, blockchain can help fill the gap between the world of traditional medicine and eMedicine by empowering patients with better control over how to share their records and with whom.
Financial Services
Despite the hype and promise of DeFi (decentralized finance), the Fed and traditional banks still play the largest role in our financial services sector today. This sector has challenges related to regulatory compliance and security that move quickly. Blockchain can help with data integrity, streamlined processes for settlements, data privacy, perhaps most interestingly, market reactivity (a lot of the tech being used in crypto exchanges is faster and better than what legacy exchanges are using).
Real Estate
Buying and selling property requires a lot of time and paperwork. Blockchain has a few ways it can benefit this industry, particularly as it relates to home buyers and sellers. Firstly, tokenizing actions within a transaction reduces the chance of fraud. Identity management and verification, which also reduces fraud, is made easier with blockchain-powered biometrics. Documentation and contracts are easier to share, execute, and trace in a blockchain system.
Logistics
Shipping and logistics is a laggard industry that will benefit most substantially from blockchain given that many of its legacy systems, like energy, are extremely antiquated. Part of the reason these systems never got upgraded to digital systems has to do with the need for security and availability. But with the advent of the Internet of Things and improved monitoring capabilities, logistics has the potential to leapfrog how and when other industries implement blockchain for tracking, communication, and security.
Government
There are several areas in blockchain technology relevant to the government. These include identity management, elections, and finances. Adoption in this sector might take some time but the payoffs are exciting.

Departments most impacted by blockchain
It should go without saying that IT executives will lead the charge when it comes to how their businesses adopt blockchain technology. That said, there are a few organizational departments that can materially improve the way business is run by embracing how blockchain can help.
Finance
Finance departments should stay up to date with the possibilities of blockchain for identity verification, payments, and security. While a CFO won’t necessarily be responsible for implementing a blockchain solution, she can champion initiatives within IT that might otherwise get quashed by legal or the board and she can recommend new solutions that will make her business more competitive, such as proof stamps for data stores to improve data integrity in ecommerce.
Legal
Legal departments understand the need for fraud-proofing. By embracing and championing the possibilities of blockchain technology, legal can help shore up businesses with better data anonymization and encryption. For some industries, particularly those listed above, the impact of blockchain technology implemented with the blessing of a legal department can have truly transformative effects.
Compliance
Much of the work of compliance departments revolves around demonstrating compliance to a particular set of laws or controls. Many software solutions boast audit trails — but these are not necessarily tamper proof. Blockchain technology is inherently better for many of the activities related to not only ensuring compliance but demonstrating it.
Security
blockchain technology is by its very nature a cryptographic technology. It follows then, that security departments will want to stand at the forefront of how businesses adopt blockchain. From shoring up distributed cloud storage, to cutting edge threat analysis, to fraud-proofing, the capabilities inherent to blockchain will take organization cybersecurity to the next level.

Learn more about how we can help

HeraSoft’s next generation software offers a variety of products and services to improve enterprise cybersecurity.

• HeraVault™ offers distributed cloud storage with built-in replication, error correction and restoration capabilities.
• HeraFlow™, is an AI-Powered threat analysis system for fast and accurate threat data monitoring perfect for high-volume workloads and enterprise-level SOC’s.
• HeraPass™, with inherently fraud proof design, helps businesses innovate user management in IoT environments by achieving the anonymization and encryption of highly-sensitive data.
• HeraStamp™ proof-stamps mission critical data to permanent data stores and can help with data integrity in, for example, ecommerce settings.

To learn more about our enterprise blockchain solutions and how we can help, click here.