The year began with an IT startup, PolySwarm, giving us interesting updates on their plan to decentralize the antivirus industry. This decentralized marketplace for threat intelligence will afford security experts the opportunity to build anti-malware solutions that compete in protecting users.
The advisory team for PolySwarm is made up of cybersecurity and blockchain professionals. For instance, their CEO, Steve Bassi, before starting PolySwarm ran an information security R&D firm which he founded. His firm had won a grant from the US Department of Homeland Security to take Identity Management on to the blockchain. Also, other members of the team had at one time or the other consulted for DARPA and Fortune 100 companies, like Mark Tonnesen who is a former McAfee CIO.
Cybersecurity concerns is a global one with far-reaching consequences from loss of resources to even loss of life. PolySwarm is aiming to save the world an annual loss of $6 trillion, a figure expected to double in few years.
Well, the figures are going to keep rising due to the prevalence of cyber attacks. As of now, at least 400 new attacks occur each minute. The saddest part is that more than 70% of these attacks are not detected by so-called powerful antivirus.
Part of the cause for this is that most producers in the antivirus industry, only focus on known malware’s and have no capacity to handle new ones. Also, the industry’s state incentivizes overlapping coverage among competitors.
In case you’re wondering, so how will this stuff work? PolySwarm would be providing a platform for security experts to scan new threats and offer protection for them after which the protection is then spread to the network. These security experts would be paid in Nectar Tokens (NCT) for their efforts.
It’s important to note though that the scans would be done by machines and every process is expected to be automated. This is to help eliminate human error that could have grave consequences. PolySwarm will be run on the blockchain and with smart contracts.
ICO for the project is scheduled to go live February 6. A lot of openness and honesty apparently trails the project. PolySwarm codes can be found on Github and there’s an active community on Telegram.
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