Seagate Trials Blockchain System to Track Hard Disk Drives

Seagate, the US tech company, is trialing its blockchain system structured to combat fake hard disk drives (HDD). The trial is an outcome of partnership with IBM, announced last November. The venture intends to assist manufacturers, business associates and integrators to guarantee the originality of HDDs by utilizing the blockchain platform of IBM.

Manuel Offenberg, managing technologist of Seagate’s data security research group, has stated that the trail was conducted with IBM as the “customer of these drives, as well as the technology provider for the underlying Hyperledger Fabric platform.” Seagate’s blockchain has been structured to enhance the supply chain of hard drives and monitor products to the clients and back to the firm in case of a return.

With this initiative, Seagate also aims to guarantee that HDDs sent back to them with defects include no personal information of customers. Describing what is being called “certified erase” as a solution, Offenberg stated that the firm prefers “to make sure that these devices have no PII [personally identifiable information] data on them.” He further stated that:

“When a drive fills in a customer’s system and the drive comes back as part of its returns process, if we can prove that the drive was cryptographically erased, and therefore, the information is no longer on the device, then, from a risk perspective, this reverse supply chain can treat that device differently.”

Talking further about the initial work with IBM, Offenberg stated that the firm is “involving the cryptographic identity of the device in the blockchain transaction, such that the digital trust of the product itself is part of the transaction.”

As per Offenberg, Seagate intends to widen its associate network in the reverse supply chain. A market survey carried out by Allied Market, a market research and consulting firm, the international blockchain supply chain market is anticipated to cross more than $9 billion by 2025.

Among the main drivers, the research pointed out the sector’s demand for transparency and enhanced security of supply chain dealings that blockchain technology could supposedly guarantee.