Blockchain: the good, the bad and the legal

While organizations investigate public and private blockchains to protect transactions and facilitate peer-to-peer transactions, they must ensure that they know who is responsible, what the system is doing, what the legal and information security risks are and who he manages it, says attorney John Salmon.

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"The key thing to remember is that it's a controllable, irrevocable, tamper-proof, distributed registry," he says. "So it's a lot harder for people to hack and a lot harder for people to change your records."

But that does not mean that this nascent technology comes out of the risks, he warns.

In a video interview at the recent Security Summit of the Information Security Group: London, Salmon talks about:

• Potential advantages offered by the use of blockchain;
• Areas of interest, including fraud, data hacking – before they are added to the blockchain – and 50/50 attacks;
• Data protection and cybersecurity standards and other legal challenges associated with the use of blockchain;
• Public blockchains against individuals.

Salmon is a partner in the Hogan Lovells business practice group and works in the fields of financial institutions and technology, media and telecommunications. Previously he was a member of Pinsent Masons, where he directed his financial services and operations in the insurance sector, among other roles of "fintech". His work covers IT sourcing and outsourcing, cloud projects, IT security, mobile payments and digital platforms.