Addressing General Data Protection Regulations for Enterprise Applications Using Blockchain Technology

Abstract

Data security has always been a concern for organisations, and with digitisation of enterprise processes over the last few decades, the need for secure enterprise application has increased tremendously. With latest incidents on misuse of social data and the emergence of new guidelines for General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) under the European Union, the need for trusted methods to ensure data protection has grown exponentially. Blockchain technology has evolved as a solution for creating trust, especially in the banking sector and public blockchains, is slowly making their ways to ensure open data standards to avoid manipulation of available public data. Enterprise software, on the contrary, consists of data from multiple stakeholders in the form of customers, business organisations, suppliers, employees and so on, and there has always been a need to control the data flow by ensuring its authenticity and security. This article looks at available data protection techniques and how data from enterprise applications can be made more secure using a blockchain ledger that tracks every transaction by having a time-stamped record of the same. This article also explains the implications of the proposed idea on the enforced GDPR by the EUparliament.