Blind Asset Management

What it is and why its important

> Digital Asset Management is the operations by which a collection of digital assets require the use of a computer application implementing a digital asset management or DAM to ensure that the owner, and possibly their delegates, can perform operations on the data files and transfers. A Blind Asset management is doing this successfully while being blindfolded.

A paradigm shift

Since its dawn, digital asset management identification has been a necessity for which an asset could be positively identified to a network in order to interact with it. And up to now, this has been synonymous with security. In our everyday operations to achieve the different things we do over all types of networks, we positively identify ourselves to a system using private keys, passwords, and so on. Once positively identified with these credentials we are allowed to interact and go about our business. Whether we are using the internet and running secure transactions or a highly sensitive military equipment we rely on positive identification with the other party before any transaction of information.

Up to now the data that was exchanged, even though based on positive identification, was more valuable than knowing its originating party’s identification. Knowing that the ID of the other party was positive and the exchange was happening was enough to satisfy the security of the system. However, today this is changing. 

As more and more parties are exchanging information the number of users is skyrocketing. Adding to that, the fact that most of the data that is being harvested is now being harvested closer and closer to individuals and with more accuracy than ever before. Biometrics are now an everyday commodity and the value of the data has now been called the new digital gold. This eldorado to data harvesting is coming at a cost to privacy. Because in many areas, the data transferred takes value in identifying the user and using that information as data as well. When you have a small number of users that is not so much of a problem but when you have thousands if not millions of users this shifts dramatically attention from the data harvested to who actually provided you with this data. Hence you can use this modus operandi to now profile the users and use that as a commodity. This has now become an art form all of its own used by the data giants of this new age. The users are now almost worth more than the data they are transferring.

We can make an analogy with the action of milking a cow. For the longest time, the milk was what we were looking for and had the most value as a product. But over time, the cow’s interaction and behavior has slowly shifted the value to the cow itself and not so much as the milk it produces. I know this is a somewhat flawed comparison but I’m sure by now you get the point.

Now, what if we took away the cow.

Well, imagine if we removed the cow’s ID from that equation. We would be left with just the milk, or in our case data. And if we do this properly we would be left with very rich data. Combine this with a dense harvesting strategy and we would have ourselves the datasets that dreams are made of. These would allow far more exploration than ever before. Then we could use today’s technologies, either AI (artificial Intelligence) or machine learning, and come up with very intricate observations and answers. All this valuable information would be harvested without ever knowing who brought it to you and while being able to positively certify the client who sent it.

This is what we call Blind Asset Management (BMA). It allows for safe and private data harvesting or transaction between two parties without ever really knowing who they are. However, the parties are certified to be allowed to exchange information on the given network. Yes, we will agree that some value is lost in the fact the provider is anonymized however this strategy allows you to get much deeper data. When one knows his/her identity is fully protected, then one is always more comfortable sharing information. 

Blind Asset Management also has additional benefits on top of privacy protection. If your database doesn’t have any personal information, then any successful breaches will only produce anonymized information. Thus removing the purpose of breaching such an infrastructure, as you can’t give what you never had. This benefit can be one of the most important features for sectors like the medical, military, or pharmaceutical fields.

Now, Blind Asset management is not the answer to the whole equation in the anonymizing puzzle however from a bottom-up development strategy it is the very first layer onto which a network transaction can start being anonymized.

Implications and Applications

Blind asset management implies that we can use this method of data transfers in places with highly sensitive clients to server communications. Weather in the medical field or the military or even in banking. Blind Asset Management can open the door to new ways of doing things. It can be used in conjunction with other technologies like Blockchain or Edge Computing. However, our main focus is on the IoT market. This is for our own usage through our data collection platform. That being said, with little effort this technology can be containerized to any application in very little time and effort. 

Now, what will this technology be used for? We can use this in many scenarios. The first one that comes to mind would be the one for which we designed in the first place. We use this in our Infrastructure architecture of one of our products, MOOVIN. Being able to collect high-quality data while providing privacy protection by design allows us the means to get the data required to provide cities and infrastructure the data they need. Being able to collect data from a large group of citizens in an ethical fashion enables high quality and dense data generation that can in turn be used by AI to produce positive outcomes. This, mixed with more traditional strategies, makes for a database that holds no private personal information. So should a breach occur, no one user is at risk of having his personal information compromised. 

Another place where this could be used is in the telecommunication sector, more specifically in 5G slicing. It’s easy to see how you can manage dynamic network slicing of all the phones on your system while allowing different access to one or more slices without ever knowing who the phone belongs to.

And what about highly secure communication networks. If someone eavesdrops on a communication, Blind Asset Management makes it very hard to make sense of it all. It’s like tapping into a phone conversation without knowing who is talking.

As you can now see, Blind Asset Management is here and it is slowly going to be an intricate part of the user-centric Privacy By Design ecosystem. As the world progresses privacy protection is becoming mandatory and the starting point for citizen data collection should be in his best interest.

This is the first of many articles that I will publish regarding this technology. As we are developing more and more applications and making it more efficient over time I sincerely hope you come with us on this adventure. Please feel free to comment and participate in this discussion and most importantly make the world a better place for all.