Beijing Certificate Authority launches blockchain security assessment for finance

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The Beijing Certificate Authority has announced a new Blockchain Security Assessment Service, after winning approval from the Chinese central government to work in the finance sector.

Its Blockchain Security Assessment is aimed at helping Chinese companies exploring blockchain to validate the strength of their security, and to identify potential vulnerabilities.

Certificate authorities issue digital certificates for verifying public keys in ecommerce, securing transactions for both merchants and consumers. With more merchants integrating blockchain technologies within their sales flow, ensuring security on blockchain becomes increasingly important.

The assessment service focuses on three elements of blockchain apps: basic requirements, security and performance. It also carries out an audit of ledgers, nodes and blockchain encryption standards.

The Beijing Certificate Authority is expected to ensure compliance with government-approved encryption standards as blockchain becomes more widely used across China, reducing the possibility of backdoors which could be exploited by hackers.

The move comes as the blockchain sector in China gathers steam, with tens of thousands of blockchain firms already registered in the country. However, without a common set of standards for the industry, doubt remains as to how many are legitimate, and how many are simply using ‘blockchain’ in their name to capitalize on increasing investor interest in distributed ledger technology.

There are also fears that companies with less robust code could be trying to pass out blockchain solutions to unsuspecting firms, leading to potential security risks further down the road.

Authorities in China have previously acknowledged this issue, with the People’s Bank of China publishing its Financial Distributed Ledger Technology Security Specification back in February.

Even in the last few weeks, the bank has followed up with a new evaluation ruleset, which was published with input from the Beijing Certificate Authority, detailing best practices for developing on blockchain.