Decentralized Identity is a concept in identity management that gives individuals control over their digital identities. It eliminates the need for usernames and passwords.

Understand more about Decentralized Identity, its features, and applications by going through our Weekly Byte here - https://www.n-coe.in/ncoe-mailers/NCoE-Weekly-Byte-Decentralized-Identity/

Today, the risk of cyberattacks is constantly increasing, and for companies and institutions, it is no longer a question of ‘if’ cybersecurity breaches will occur but rather ‘when’.

Having a strategy to mitigate against cyber-attacks is critical because it protects all categories of data from theft and damage. It safeguards sensitive data, personally identifiable information (PII), protected health information (PHI), personal information, intellectual property, data, and governmental and industry information systems. 

Your association cannot defend itself against data breach campaigns without a cybersecurity program, making it an irresistible target for cybercriminals.

Why collaboration?

The future of cybersecurity demands collaboration. Hackers are attempting to breach secure networks from numerous angles. Therefore, your defences should reminisce about a proactive strategy that leverages diverse areas of expertise. There are many levels of cybersecurity, each as important as the other, but addressing every aspect would be overwhelming to a single organization. Industries will find more robust defences in partnerships, and the shared knowledge will benefit clients.

There are many facets to consider, too many vulnerabilities to notice, and few IT professionals to manage every threat. However, collaboration with cybersecurity solutions can give organizations an advantage. Team projects are more successful with the cooperation of diverse individuals; likewise, an organization can have a more robust cybersecurity strategy when they decide to partner with others.

When Research and Industry come together they Innovate

We believe that to achieve maximum success, regardless of the size or type of your organization, you must make cybersecurity an integral part of your overall business strategy and partner with IT professionals who not only understand how to leverage technology to their advantage but who are also committed to understanding your business goals and aligning their strategy to yours.

Our engaging utility, the Cyber Security Research Network (CSRN) can help businesses to collaborate with the researchers and help facilitate cutting-edge cybersecurity solutions and secure cyberspace for us all.

What is Cyber Security Research Network (CSRN)?

 Analysis of network security requires working with scores of data. Integrating and sharing this data between administrators helps perform precise analysis to address threats more efficiently. In addition, network security strategic alliances can provide a mutual benefit for all parties. If you're looking for an ideal platform to connect with key stakeholders across the domain and identify stellar research in cybersecurity, then CSRN is perfect for you. The utility helps bring together research and industry often operate independently, to help build cohesive, better solutions.

Cyber Security Research Network (CSRN) attempts to connect these planes to unleash the potential of collaboration between the two forces. So, use the CSRN utility to leverage core, futuristic, and cutting-edge cybersecurity research.

Features of Cyber Security Research Network (CSRN) Utility

• Get connected

Connect to leverage from the core, futuristic, and cutting-edge cybersecurity research.

• Browse

Browse the network of cybersecurity researchers arranged systematically.

• Accurate research

Find the research work relevant to your work or your building products.

• Diverse possibilities

Research work of 200+ professors mapped, and many more.

Why use CSRN?

It is a utility developed by National CoE, a joint initiative of the Data Security Council of India and the Ministry of Electronics and IT. A mapped, tagged, organized, and visible repository for building Cyber Security Research Network (CSRN). 

Whatever technology ideas you have for cyber security, share them with like-minded peers and identify with a database of novel research. The utility will help you collaborate with a diverse network to help you examine them, provide infrastructure to build and test them, validate them by experts and leaders, find a market for them, and explore investment opportunities.

Who can benefit from CSRN?

The utility is specially devised for startups, researchers, and the industry. Access to this utility is free for academia, researchers, and students. So, just register yourself and start collaborating today.

If you're unsure whether you want to opt for CSRN, go for the 45-day free trial.

You can try all NCoE’s utilities for FREE as NCoE offers a 45-day free trial. You can connect and collaborate with the NCoE research network and get your queries resolved at ncoe@dsci.in.

Government bodies can email NCoE at ncoe@dsci.in for a subscription to these beneficial utilities.

Initially, when it debuted in 2009, the buzz about blockchain-primarily revolved around its uses in the financial services industry. Later, it swept its way into various industries due to its transparency and security pillars in a zero-trust environment. Currently, the use of blockchain is limited to the start-up domain and has spread to well-established financial institutions. This technology has a staggering CAGR rate of over 69% between 2019 to 2025. Despite such promising development, significant companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple have held back from this technology.  The biggest revolution of this technology is that it ensures provenance. To put it plainly, it validates that something was done at a certain point in time. This unleashes the power to avoid corruption and unlock more collaboration and value potential.  

Blockchain has grown into one of the most failsafe systems of dealing in the digital network space while not being indestructible. The technology has been praised for ensuring information integrity when used as intended.  Many companies have invested in blockchain research and come up with solutions to meet their business requirements.

To begin with, let's see what FAGMA companies have contributed to this field.

MICROSOFT

Microsoft is one of the most supportive corporations when it comes to cryptocurrencies. Microsoft had started accepting Bitcoin payments on its website in 2014 when almost no one had even heard of cryptocurrencies. Microsoft has some 40 patents related to Blockchains as payment gateways and for secure storage. Bill Gates and several of his non-profit organizations have looked at Blockchains to improve their organization's workings.

Among the many Blockchain patents filed by Microsoft, the one which highlights security at its core is " Establishment of a confidential blockchain network- US-10922425-B2" and "Proof of ticket consensus processing on a confidential blockchain network - US20200089895A1".

Microsoft filed a patent in the USA in 2018 for the 'Establishment of a confidential blockchain network,' which was published in 2021.

In this patent, a permissioned blockchain is caused to be deployed to nodes. Unable to store a nano block (encrypted database), access level blocks are established. The access level blocks include access level blocks for users, including security credentials for the user. For each access level block: nodes are selected for the deployment block and are replicated to each of the selected nodes. There are at least two copies of each access level block on the permissioned blockchain, and it is capable of performing cryptographic operations.

Microsoft USA filed another patent in 2018 for the 'Proof of ticket consensus processing on a confidential blockchain network,' which was published in 2020.

In this patent, each node communicates a transaction in a permissioned blockchain that stores an access level block corresponding to a user. At each node associated with the transaction, a real-time determination is made to verify the security credentials for the transaction. In response to generating a consensus among each node, approval for the transaction is provided. At each access level block in the permissioned blockchain, cryptographic details are stored as a nanoblock in the access level block.

AMAZON

Amazon has listed "thousands of banned, unsafe, or mislabeled products" with fake certifications, which led its inclination towards a Patent for a blockchain system that would allow "verifiable tracking of an item through a supply chain using a distributed electronic ledger." The patents "Blockchained-backed device and user provisioning - US-10581847-B1" and "Granting and securing ownership of cross-application digital assets - US-10946291-B1" also reflect the security implementation of blockchain.

In "Blockchained-backed device and user provisioning."

Distributed computing and storage systems and services are not necessarily under complete control of the implementing user or enterprise. The integrity of transactions made in addition to that can be challenging to ascertain. In such scenarios, the cryptographic method for authenticating the identity of the connecting users and/or devices may be implemented. However, it can be challenging to detect attackers in a diffuse environment.

In " Granting and securing ownership of cross-application digital assets," a blockchain-based approach is made for granting and securing cross-application digital assets. In Current games, the players don't truly own the loot earned, but this development will allow digital assets to be transferred between multiple applications, which multiple developer entities may offer.

FACEBOOK

Experts believe Facebook could use blockchain technology to enhance privacy for the billions of people on its platform on any given day on the privacy and data fronts. For instance, blockchain could be employed to prove a person's identity and could be used to provide users with more control over their data. Facebook could create contracts that stipulate who can receive information on the platform. Working on this, Facebook announced it was making the team study how the blockchain technology behind bitcoin can be used in developing new products. 

APPLE

In August 2017, Apple filed a patent for a blockchain-based timestamp verification system. Electronic trading systems can't function without timestamps, and network administrators rely on timestamps to locate and fix problems. If timestamps are stored on a blockchain, the network will recognize when an intruder tries to alter a timestamp, creating unauthorized blocks that the network would not validate. Instead, the network would reauthenticate the proper timestamp.

GOOGLE

Google filed a blockchain patent application focusing on securing information stored in the cloud, even as it expresses a strong dislike for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The search engine giant is looking forward to using blockchain to record signatures and verify the data stored in their databases.

To do so, they will utilize a "tamper-evident log." The application uses two blockchains – the first one contains signatures, and the second one stores the information verified by the signature.

Another giant in blockchain research is IBM.

In 2020, IBM made significant strides toward bringing blockchain into the mainstream by focusing on the benefits it offers enterprise users. Those virtues include connecting with a broader range of partners to share data across secure networks built on trust and transparency.

It can be noted that, through applications such as nonfungible tokens, record-breaking investment, and market capitalization, 2021 has given the blockchain market a fresh lease of life.

With that being said, market activity and excitement, on the other hand, draw more than just headlines and enthusiastic adopters. There is a rising extent of current cybersecurity concerns and the unique hazards that decentralized systems might permit. Also, blockchain penetration is still relatively low. This is, in part, because it's still tough to use. As I've covered before, blockchain-based development is still relatively inaccessible.

National CoE Cyber Show Podcast ft. Ashwani Paliwal, Founder & CEO, of SecOps Solution

The Indian cybersecurity industry has grown multifold with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The rapid technological advancement, remote work environment and growing cyber threat landscape have created a demand for the cybersecurity product landscape to evolve and tackle security challenges to ensure business resiliency. India has witnessed a significant rise in the number of cybersecurity startups, leading the country to become the global hub of cybersecurity innovations. 

The objective of launching our podcast 

To inspire cybersecurity entrepreneurs & innovators, NCoE has launched a podcast called National CoE Cyber Show on Spotify. The podcast show features budding security startup stories to engage and motivate aspiring entrepreneurs to pursue their mission & scale their ventures. 

Hosted by Sonam Jain, Marketing Manager at NCoE, the first podcast episode welcomes one of the youngest cybersecurity entrepreneurs, Ashwani Paliwal, Founder & CEO, of SecOps Solution. SecOps Solution offers enterprise-wide, workload-deep security and compliance for applications, infrastructure and cloud without gaps, alert fatigue and operational cost of agents. Also, the startup was recently selected by Startup India to showcase their products to dignitaries present at Startup Innovation Week, an international event by GoI.

The podcast highlights the startup's product building journey, customer acquisition best practices and the founder's passion & professional journey. 

"Building a company is equivalent to first finding the right problem statement that you want to solve and you can only do that once you're deep into the domain. So experiment & learn what security is!" Ashwani Paliwal, Founder & CEO, of SecOps Solution.

Intrigued to know the story behind the startup's name, SecOps? Tune in to our first episode podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/45gyKRjd4NdD0HPyLecv2q

Podcast listening offers many benefits to entrepreneurs, innovators, founders, industry leaders & students as they can play the podcasts while multi-tasking or during free time, anytime & anywhere. The National CoE Cyber Show podcast is a great way to hear interesting entrepreneurial journeys & learn about the industry. The podcast offers valuable insights from industry experts on various cybersecurity-related topics. 

Top 4 'Hardware Security' companies revolutionising the way security works.

As the demand for vigorous security defence grows by the day, the hardware and cybersecurity technology market has exploded as well as the number of available solutions. Storing your data in the cloud means you must trust the provider not to monitor your data and trust their system to keep your data secure. Moving your files offline and onto an encrypted hard drive is primarily a secure way to protect your information.In this blog, we bring top 4 hardware security companies which are revolutionising the way security works. Between high-profile ransomware seizures and mergers, it is a time of high stakes and significant change for the industry. 

1. Payatu

Based out of Pune, Payatu Technologies is one of the leading security testing and services companies specialized in Software, Application and Infrastructure security assessments and in-depth technical security training in existence from 2011. Payatu is a Research-powered cybersecurity service, and training corporation specialized in IoT, Embedded Web, Cloud, and Infrastructure security assessments with a proven track record of retaining software, hardware & infrastructure for customers in over 20 countries. Their deep technical security training and state-of-the-art research methodologies and tools ensure the security of their client's assets. Payatu believes in following one's passion. With this thought, they have built a world-class team of experts, researchers and executors who are willing to go beyond to deliver the best-in-class hardware security services. They are passionate folks working on the most delinquent and cutting-edge security technology.

With the expert knowledge, they own a state-of-the-art Hardware Lab equipped with the best-of-breed tools and equipment for performing security evaluation and assurance of hardware/IoT devices for OEMs. They use the latest hardware and radio security testing methodologies, techniques, and processes. 

They have built a security program for a security-critical government agency in Asia. The Payatu Bandits helped a global MNC identify critical bugs or vulnerabilities in the source code of all enterprises. They conducted a thorough source code review to secure the digital platforms. The hands-on technical experience, carved niche in the information security ecosystem, gives us a distinguished advantage. 

2. ChipSpirit

Based out of Bengaluru, Chipspirit's vision is to empower customers to achieve more with efficient solutions. They have 50+ years of relevant experience and former appointments with companies like Intel, Broadcom, LSI, Freescale, Actel, Atmel and Synopsys. They have created an Indian Navy Collaboration - The first-of-its-kind implementation of cutting-edge security applications.

Chipspirit's product, ABHED-1 is a dedicated secure hardware-based offline encryption device for transacting classified data over Public / Open Data networks. The purpose of the device is to undertake folder and file level encryption with data files read from source USB media device and written to a different target USB media device. The hardware-based device is to encrypt, decrypt and handle common Windows/ Linux file system over USB on either end. After Chipspirit won the Prestigious iDEX challenge in March 2019, they started co-developing the Hardware security solutions with Indian Defence under the Make-In-India initiative by Ministry of Defence. The secure hardware will enable our armed forces to have offline security with their own systems in place. With this hardware implementation the Graded secure data handled with self-driven algorithms will be faster, simple, and secure.

3. ESP of IIT Kharagpur

Based out of IIT Kharagpur, ESP-Research strives to bring security to your daily lives in this hyper-connected era. Started at STEP@IIT-KGP, ESP-Research brings sufficient knowledge & aptitude in embedded security. They strongly believe in 'Innovating for a Secure World'. Created by the leading researchers of the domain, ESP-Research provides keys for your security and privacy essentials. Their professionals work to make sure you stay ahead of the hackers. ESP of IIT Kharagpur strongly believes in cultivating research, which helps get geared up for unexplored threats.

The company believes that threat intelligence is the glue that binds together disparate approaches and teams and that a threat-centric security operations platform is vital to overall security. The ESP of IIT Kharagpur preached the industry demand for greater threat visibility and customer-defined controls. Still, it's also found a way to attain a single visual representation of an entire situation. 

They have an expert team of professionals backed up with an extensive background in electronic systems design and manufacture, emphasising secure communications and storage systems.

4. Cypherock

Cypherock X1 is the World's First Hardware Wallet that never stores private keys in a single place, giving it 10x more security than an everyday hardware wallet. It doesn't require you to backup your Seed Phrase anywhere and helps in the Inheritance of your Crypto without compromising Privacy & Control. The company has developed security storage solutions for blockchain-based digital assets and private keys. 

The company's product is a hardware wallet in the shape of a mobile case, enabling users to maintain the security level of the blockchains investment, avoid the threat of interruption in the software, and equip a physical-digital solution for the safe custody of crypto assets. ConsenSys Ventures selected them as the top 10 blockchain startups

ABHED1 is a Hardware based Encryption Device. You would ask what is unique in this? The keyword here is “Hardware”. It is one of the world’s first fully-Hardware based Encryption-Decryption device, no microprocessor core is present in this device, no software which implies no virus, so there is no chance of hacking using the instruction sets etc. Quiet a unique device, right?

Let’s see why there is a need for fully Hardware based security devices:

As per Rob Stubbs “Software is simply not up to the job of protecting highly sensitive or valuable data. Cryptography helps, but it needs high-quality keys that are well protected. Thus, hardware-based security is commonly employed in banking and in particularly vulnerable applications such as credit cards and mobile devices.” - via Fortanix

Especially for Nation’s Defense related activities which carries a highly classified data, Hardware-based security becomes more important. ABHED-1 is being developed by CHIPSPIRIT  for this very case under the umbrella of the iDEX scheme by Ministry of Defense for defense related communication. 

Have you ever thought of how you might be at a risk of getting hacked? If not, you might be getting hacked already! Beware! As the world encountered the pandemic, the whole geography changed with lockdowns and work from home. With this increasing use of digital devices, hackers have been having a field day. Cyber-attacks-as-a-service has started to gain pace, where hackers can rent the skills, they don’t have. Phishing, eavesdropping and backdoor exploits have been one the most common ways for the hackers to gain access to the sensitive system.

It was reported that China used to deliberately modify motherboards used in most of the servers, to let the hackers eavesdrop on the data. Recently a security flaw was identified in MediaTek chips, which let hackers to eavesdrop on Android users. This could have affected 37% of the world’s smartphones if not detected. There is also the Pegasus spyware havoc in the Indian political space. This spyware could literally obtain any data from the device, be it call logs, messages, WhatsApp chats, photos, browsing history. This could be installed by clicking links or opening apps or even by not doing anything. Even the method of exploiting has evolved, which started with worms and trojans, it has come to advanced viruses, ransomwares which keeps your data as hostage. Using ABHED1, most of these ways of hacking will not even be possible, even if it is possible, it will be a very difficult to get full access of system.

Now one way to deal with this is to use anti-virus or protection software which will not let the hackers exploit your systems. But the problem is that with rapidly evolving viruses, one cannot be sure if the anti-virus can handle the newly evolved virus till the update is done. So, you have another solution in the form of encryption. By using this technique, you can be sure that even if the data gets into the hands of the hackers, they won’t be able to decipher. 

Okay, so we can encrypt our data to avoid information leak. Now the question arises, whether it should be implemented in software or hardware. We can build robust and efficient algorithms to encrypt our data using software. But there are vulnerabilities that can capture the encryption keys and can compromise the whole system. An example would be Spectre and Meltdown. For software to run, a microprocessor is required, which executes the instructions/ code. These instructions are queued in front of the CPU. Sometimes this queue is cleared owing to different conditions. When the queue is cleared, the vulnerabilities can insert malicious code into it to access vital data stored in the memories. Spectre and Meltdown affected most of the Intel, AMD and ARM processor, hence majority of the world’s devices were at risk. Here comes ABHED1 to the rescue, as ABHED1 does not have any Core or Microprocessor, attack using instruction set is not even a possibility.

Another example would be the Log4j vulnerability. This is an open-source library widely used by businesses and web portals. There were vulnerabilities found which could let the hackers insert malicious code or run a DoS attack. In the hardware approach, circuits are designed to run the encryption without the need of microprocessors/instructions. Hence most of the vulnerabilities will not affect the system. Abhed1 being a hardware-based encryption device, resolves most of these issues. Hardware security has great applications in the Defense and Finance industry. 

A Plain text USB data can be converted into cipher text USB using ABHED1 at a very high bandwidth in a highly secure manner with multiple levels of authentication (With devices that contain PUF). Similarly, we can convert Cipher text USB data into plain text USB data. ABHED1 also supports “Bump-in-the-wire” based Ethernet-1G transfers, so you can send and receive encrypted data through the internet with hardware encryption. It may happen that the hackers may try to forcibly acquire data by prying into the device. No worries! Our device is tamper-proof, meaning the device contextual data will not easily get into the wrong hands. It also has Multi-Factor Authentication which prevents unauthorized access in highly secure manner with challenge-response mechanisms.

Aptly said, Necessity is the mother of invention. The internet that exists today, came into being because the US needed to effectively communicate between the West and the East coast during the war. And the first modern form of encryption was used by the Germans in WW2. They encrypted their radio transmissions so that the enemy couldn’t get information and the British were losing the war when they enlisted Alan Turing to develop a device to break the encryption. This device formed the basis for modern computing devices. Due to the rapidly evolving technologies, it has become imperative to upgrade our defenses and in our era hardware security is the need of the hour.

1. https://fortanix.com/blog/2019/09/why-the-world-is-moving-to-hardware-based-security/
2. https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/beware-2022-may-see-cyber-attacks-evolve-to-new-levels/article38094515.ece
3. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies#skip-to-main-content
4. https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/bug-in-mediatek-chips-could-lead-to-hackers-eavesdropping-on-android-users-71637822411231.html
5. https://www.freepressjournal.in/india/pegasus-spyware-controversy-the-story-so-far
6. https://www.techrepublic.com/article/spectre-and-meltdown-explained-a-comprehensive-guide-for-professionals/
7. https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/cyber-security-log4j-vulnerability-issue-explained/article38061525.ece