Analyzing Privacy and GDPR Compliance Issues

This chapter analyzes the potential privacy issues arising with the adoption of blockchain, particularly in terms of privacy law compliance. We will address some of the most controversial use cases and scenarios, such as those involving the protection of sensitive data stored in blockchains, ensuring the privacy of sensitive healthcare data, and protecting sensitive data accessed from IoT devices. Finally, we'll learn how to manage and deploy blockchain technology in order to comply with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) privacy law.

The topics covered in the chapter are as follows:

• Preserving sensitive data in a blockchain
• Leveraging blockchain for healthcare
• Improving IoT security with blockchain
• Reconciling blockchain with the GDPR

In the next section, we will see how to protect sensitive...

Preserving sensitive data in a blockchain

One of the most delicate matters that must be assessed in relation to compliance with privacy protection regulations concerns storing sensitive data within a blockchain. Choosing which information to actually store within a blockchain is therefore one of the fundamental decisions that needs to be made.

The data that is published on a blockchain is in fact accessible to all the nodes participating in the network. This is true both in public blockchains, where there are no restrictions on access to the ledger, and in permissioned blockchains, although in the latter case access to data is allowed only to known and trusted counterparts.

In the next section, we will examine what data must actually be stored within a blockchain.

What data should...

Leveraging blockchain for healthcare

The sharing of medical information between various organizations while ensuring the security, integrity, and privacy of health data represents one of the most significant problems in the digital healthcare field. It is therefore increasingly proposed to adopt blockchain technology in order to exploit the characteristics of immutability and integrity inherent in blockchain when sharing data between different operators.

In fact, in the healthcare domain it must be ensured that access to patient's health data is reserved only for authorized subjects in order to protect not only patients' privacy, but also their safety. Healthcare organizations are also required to comply with both the GDPR rules and the Privacy Rule of the HIPAA of 1996.

In the following section, we see how blockchain technology helps protect healthcare data.

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Improving IoT security with blockchain

IoT is becoming increasingly important in the development of next-generation technological solutions. However, there are challenges commensurate with the increase in development opportunities, especially in terms of security and privacy. The distinctive feature of IoT is the ability to connect different types of device to each other, not limited to traditional computers, but also objects of common use, such as appliances, sensors, cameras, televisions, and even people and other living beings.

Each device is identified on IoT by a unique identifier. Within IoT, each device is able to independently establish communications with other devices based on different communication protocols: human-to-machine, machine-to-machine, and so on. Establishing communications automatically and pervasively between the different devices within IoT has the consequence...

Reconciling blockchain with the GDPR

Without any claim to exhaustiveness, in this section we examine the main points of contrast and friction between blockchain technology and the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which can make compliance with European privacy legislation particularly demanding. The GDPR came into force in May 2018, and introduces a series of fundamental rights to guarantee the correct processing of personal data relating to European citizens.

To protect these fundamental rights, a series of obligations (and penalties, in the event of non-fulfillment) are provided by the GDPR that fall on the subjects who assume the role of data controllers. Data controllers are all those subjects that can decide the purposes and means of personal data processing. From what we have said so far, some difficulties in the correct application of the...

Summary

In this chapter, we have examined the most delicate aspects regarding compliance with privacy requirements in the context of the processing of sensitive data carried out through blockchain. We have dealt with various aspects regarding the use of blockchain in the healthcare sector, and the critical issues associated with the growing diffusion of IoT technologies adopted in managing medical data. We also analyzed the possible advantages offered by the adoption of the blockchain to mitigate the vulnerabilities of IoT devices. Finally, we dealt with compliance issues with the GDPR, analyzing the main aspects of the EU legislation that are difficult to apply within the blockchain.

Congratulations! You have come to the end of a demanding path that has led you to greater awareness of securing blockchain. We hope you enjoyed your reading!

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