The recent distributed denial of service attacks has everyone talking. The responsible party managed to take down more than 80 sites, including Twitter, Spotify and Amazon. But IBM Corp. has a technology that is working to prevent hacks like that from happening, and also making it easy to trace were someone to try. Part of the problem with the recent attacks is that the networks had many anonymous users, making it difficult to trace who had done what from where.

“You need one [network] that’s private and you know everyone on the network, so if any unknown entity accesses it, you can isolate it immediately,” said Shyam Nagarajan, director of Global Sales, Blockchain and Smarter Process at IBM. Nagarajan was interviewed by Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and John Furrier (@furrier), hosts of theCUBE*, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during IBM World of Watson 2016 in Las Vegas, NV.

The threat of anonymity is eliminated with blockchain, a technology that serves as the public ledger for financial transactions. To hack such a system, 51 percent or more of the users would have to be in on the hack – an unthinkable percentage, according to Nagarajan. In addition, significant amounts of assets are not moved on the network itself, meaning that even if there were an attack, the hackers would be unlikely to get much out of it.

Tools and tips for customers

IBM has three messages it would like to get out to customers. The first is that it’s invested in bringing in a community around Hyperledger, blockchain technologies for business. The second message is that IBM offers blockchain to both developers and organizations that are just getting started. This includes tutorials and walkthroughs, included through IBM Bluemix cloud platform.

The third and final message: “We are actively working with customers and building solutions together. … Every conversation with the customer is a little bit different because their needs are different,” said Nagarajan.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM World of Watson 2016.

*Disclosure: IBM and other companies sponsor some IBM World of Watson segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither IBM nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.

Photo by SiliconANGLE