Beyond Satoshi’s Bitcoin – The Next Poster For Blockchain Is In Your Pocket

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Although Bitcoin was first created in 2008, most of us had never heard of it until 2017, when it saw its first meteoric rise to almost $ 20,000 per coin. More people were then made aware of this breakthrough technology when Bitcoin increased its historic bull from $ 10,000 to over $ 60,000 in the span of six months from 2020 to 2021.

With the advent of Bitcoin, its creator Satoshi Nakamoto also gave us the gift of blockchain. This distributed ledger technology essentially allows millions of people to contribute to the same Bitcoin network by loaning their computing power for the purpose of verifying transactions while being rewarded with Bitcoin, also known as ‘mining’.

Amid a meteoric rise in cryptocurrency, NFTs have now entered the contention for the face of blockchain technology. So far in 2021, billions have been spent on NFT and they only hit the mainstream market at the start of the year.

Both of these technologies have been successful for a variety of reasons, but they fundamentally exist because of the ability of blockchain to bring an almost bulletproof level of verification into the internet age. This is due to the unique way the blockchain stores data: Essentially, each new block of data connects to all of the blocks that precede it in a crypto chain in such a way that it is almost impossible to tamper with. All transactions within blocks are validated and agreed to by a consensus mechanism across the entire network, ensuring that every transaction is true and correct.

Total Network Services, Corp founded in 2019 by blockchain innovator Thomas Carter is a group of people who understand the potential of this technology and find opportunities to infuse blockchain where its unique capabilities are needed to create a more technological environment. durable and efficient.

ICT, especially in supply chain and device management, is one of the biggest industries in need of security verification and improvement. So what does this mean exactly? It’s the phone in your hand that you are probably reading this article from right now. This is where we do our banking, consume content, store sensitive data, manage our schedules, and communicate with loved ones. With more than five billion people using cell phones and an average user spending more than four hours a day using apps, smartphones are the number one target of malicious actors.

So the obvious question is: why not bring the power of blockchain to this space? Take a technology known for its ability to provide verification and link it with an industry that has the most to lose from a lack of security.

Okay, blockchain could help, but where exactly would this solution fit in the ICT ecosystem? And how would you get adopted?

Answer: Don’t reinvent the wheel, just attach it to the car.

In early 2020, TNS contacted the Telecommunications Industry Association with a concept called Enhanced Mobile Equipment Identifier (E-MEID). E-MEID is based on MEID, a globally unique 56-bit identification number for a physical piece of mobile station equipment. Globally administered by the TIA, MEIDs typically display the manufacturer’s code and serial number of the equipment. The number is permanently affixed to the device and used to facilitate identification and tracking of mobile equipment. Assignments are coordinated with International Mobile Equipment Identifiers (IMEIs) to enable global roaming and harmonization between 3G, 4G and 5G technologies.

The concept of TNS was to pair a MEID with a blockchain specifically designed to support the security of the ICT supply chain.

If a MEID is attached to a blockchain, a globally unique digital token can be created that can represent any associated physical or digital asset. This token would be called an enhanced MEID. “Tokenization” is the name of this process. When attached to a blockchain, MEID’s documentation capabilities expand to include hardware nomenclature (BOM), software nomenclature, and software remediation activity. This additional capability can improve visibility of an organization’s hardware and software supply chain, the provenance of components, and internal change management processes.

TNS is also Rypplzz’s partner in this business. Their Interlife ™ spatial engineering technology adds time-stamped geolocation data and geotagged functional management capability to the enhanced MEID solution. These additions can dramatically improve security measures and provide near real-time operational options based on the location of the associated asset.

An organization, for example, could deactivate software running on equipment provisioned by E-MEID based on its geolocation. As part of our collaboration, TIA has assigned up to thirty-two A1 blocks of MEID numbers to TNS (33,554,432 numbers). These can be “tokenized” to create 33,554,432 Individual Enhanced MEID (E-MEID). Pre-assigned MEIDs can also be “tokenized” via a post-deployment blockchain registration process.

TIA is leading the way in ICT supply chain security with the development of the first-ever global supply chain security standard, “SCS 9001”, which specifies verifiable and measurable criteria and uses a system of process-based quality management to verify trusted suppliers. TNS, as a participating member in the development process of the SCS 9001 Supply Chain Security Standard, was able to identify how E-MEID could collect 5 of the 11 supply chain security measures recommended in the standard to come. That’s why we extended our collaboration to four industry partners to demonstrate how to apply E-MEID to four specific ICT use cases under the SCS 9001 pilot program.

Our pilot partners:

To learn more about E-MEID drivers, check out these two articles:

If you would like to learn more about the enhanced MEID or the associated SCS 9001 pilot demonstrations, please contact Kevin L. Jackson, SVP, TNS Corporation, by email at [email protected].

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

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