Through my experiences as software engineer I’ve had many instances where people have always asked “How can we write, and lock a file, that’s unhackable”, and there’s always the brainstorming session.

When I worked at IBM and we were working on TIAM (Tivoli Information Archive Manager) it was, “Well, we install a client on each desktop, watch all the documents in a folder location, and when the file watcher changes you back the file up to the device and then release it for editing”…OK great “What happens if you have terminal access?”, “What happens if the network is down”, “What happens when they save it to a thumb drive…” and the what if’s just keep stacking up. While working at Ciber, I was informed of a process that Mylan needs to follow where once a committee of lawyers, doctors, etc would meet and discuss what content they wanted to push to a website, they needed to discuss that internally. Determine this, and then when put into a testing/staging cycle would send the link to the FDA, who would then PRINT THE ENTIRE WEBSITE OUT. Review it, and approve it. Give them a reference number, and then Mylan could publish it externally for customers. If I remember correctly, publishing incorrect data was a fine of something along the lines of $10,000/min (if the FDA noticed). This is a huge process and headache.

This brings us to our use case:

Document Retention:

There is HUGE business in document retention. Lawyers are required to store documents for up to 15yrs. Medical Professionals and Companies are required to store their data for up to years as well, and reference these afterwards…and here we have the perfect solution. The immutable blockchain with Po.et

For those that don’t know, the blockchain is an immutable “lego set”, as new blocks are added, they’re chained together, added, but never deleted….*perfect*

Essentially you could take the Po.et and Frost API, publish your approved staged content, push the WorkID to a database and be done. In an experiment, in .NET, pulling back the content in a Work ID with a MVC site, allowing the site to present itself proven immutable content. Not only could this content be validated on the blockchain, but CANNOT be tampered with (you’d have to hack the site, substituting the WorkID with one maliciously created, with other safeguards this would be impossible).

NOTE: This could probably fall under some more indepth review, there are some concerns that would need to be addressed. For example: Due to the client/attorney privilege could you stick a record into the public blockchain? Could you put medical records into this and not have them publicly reviewed? More testing would need to be done.

Update: I imagine this could be done securely. As an experiment I built a editor that allows reading in a text file, encrypts it, and then submits it to the blockchain. Upon recalling this you’re presented with the encrypted text

Proof (WorkID: cb5e220111501c7da6c2296fa00a9c49ec44fe27175ef7d691f20e74372ebfd4)

Running the decrypt function with the same password presents the raw information unencrypted.

What’s this mean?

While TECHNICALLY not intended for this use case, Po.et and the blockchain essentially become a document repository. While this is being “sold” as a document “signing” processes and use for copyright, I believe this could also be useful as a security backup and augment their data and document retention programs for these industries and others as well.

The possibilities are endless. And this is true with all blockchain tech. The question is, can it be leveraged properly?

For Po.et, I know they’re going after a niche, however, it’s a small niche…valuable, however small. Expand that just slightly, and I think you’ll break open into other areas where the money prints itself, and changes the world as we know it.