In this week’s podcast we will be discussing digital IDs onto the blockchain. We had the pleasure of having 2 guests in this episode. Daniel Faria, CEO of Nodalblock and Timothy Dwyer, VP and Assistant Treasurer at Nationwide Insurance. Daniel has had a career in cyber security and entrepreneurship. Timothy has spent a majority of his career in treasury and navigated into blockchain about 3 years ago by looking at the disruption it could bring to banking.

Blockchain in two minutes To explain blockchain in a non-technical manner, think about a traditional accounting firm that has one hundred book keepers. What if each of one of those one hundred book keepers had at the same time had to maintain a ledger saying exactly the same thing. Out of those hundred if more than 51 would say that a certain record is wrong, then all of the other ones would have to fix the book to maintain the record exactly the same way.

About Nodalblock Nodalblock is a blockchain cyber security company.

The fastest FBI has stated that the fastest growing crime in the US is identity theft with one identity being stolen every 3 seconds! That’s 35,000 every day and more than 15 million every year.

Nodalblock include digital IDs with multi factor authentication with a certification API that can be used to prove the authenticity of any digital file. A legal binding digital signature and and then an encrypted file transfer tool made available for a client’s IT systems via a regular API.

Nodalblock essentially brings security to the blockchain.

About Nationwide Nationwide is a diversified insurance company offering life insurance, mutual funds, property and casualty.

Nationwide has had a keen interest in blockchain, ever since it launched a proof of concept for “Proof of Insurance” with the RiskBlock Alliance (featured in this episode – An Introduction to the RiskBlock Alliance) at the end of 2017.

Nationwide has been trying to determine if there was an opportunity for business disruption with blockchain technology on a stand-alone basis. They’re still trying to determine that and they still haven’t found a blockchain use case that will fundamentally change their business.

They’re still continuing to look for that and consider themselves to be in education mode regarding blockchian.

They have recognised the barriers to entry to blockchain, in the form of the network effect and in speed of transactions that can be pushed throught the network. Two points which they felt will be resolved in due course.

Digital ID As we all know we all leave comprehensive digital footprints wherever we transact on the internet. Whether it is on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter, financial transactions with Paypal and Apple Pay amongst others. We all must disclose personal and financial data to uses these services. This leads to our personal data being stored in various databases which we have little control over. How can digital IDs on the blockchain help to address this, especially in a world where our IDs get hacked with Equifax last year and Facebook last week?

To answer that question businesses have to really ask themselves the question of the value they place in running KYCs and in keeping that information secure. Do they have the necessary processes in place, especially when considering that the biggest security problem is humans; employees in firms that get hacked due to a phishing attack.

As public and private blockchains can interact between each other it gives large organisations such as insurance companies the strategic opportunity to open up part of their stored internal information (such as their customers digital IDs) to talk to a larger network (public blockchains) whilst maintaining the private sections secure, whilst leveraging the power of public blockchains.

Nodalblock had an example of a recent piece of work they did for a large European insurance company whose GDPR,