Elevating the trust in digital data exchange using blockchain technology: an approach to mitigate risks of fraud and forgery

By Amar Tumballi, Vice President-Engineering at Dhiway

In 2020, Checkster, a reference-checking company, published a report concluding that 78% of candidates who applied for a role already have or have considered misrepresenting themselves. The most commonly misrepresented pieces of information include proof of knowledge (claiming to know something they did not), proof of experience (claiming to work for a different duration than they did), or proof of education (claiming to have a certificate that was incorrect). The growth in the background verification and checks business indicates the growing problem around falsifying claims during hiring. And this is just one example of an area where falsification and fraud are rampant.

The legacy methods of claims were built around paper records. And over the years, as certain kinds of records are found to be forged more than others, businesses approached the prevention and detection of fraud by including innovative approaches. We are now familiar with the presence of holograms, unique stickers, and exceptional security features in the paper as well as ink and related printing technologies. These approaches present two critical challenges – it raises the per unit cost of producing the certificates and records, and the approaches are always playing catch-up. These challenges mean that any records or certificates printed on paper will likely be tampered with or forged.

A transition from the more legacy paper-based approach to the somewhat modern digital portable document format (PDF) addresses some aspects of the challenges but not all. Digital documents like PDFs can be tampered with. So the integrity of the data presented as a PDF cannot be assured. We have unique challenges as the hybrid approach (paper and digital PDF) is very familiar to consumers. If the issuer cannot assure of data integrity, then any verification process has an inherent risk of accepting bad data. Consequently, additional checks and verification flows are included depending on the verification process requirements to enhance the quality of data available and maintain the integrity of the service offering.

With increasing services being developed around the need for high-quality data streams as input, it is essential to de-risk the systems and explore innovative approaches to address this issue. Additionally, the new approaches should be manageable for the end consumers to receive, manage and share their records. In this context, including blockchain technology as a ledger of transactions can provide the necessary infrastructure to create trustworthy interactions for not just records and certificates but for a wide range of domains. Initially intimately identified with Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, blockchain has since been the foundation of projects that reduce the trust deficit in digital transactions. Intricate domains such as logistics, shipping, skills credentialing, and others have benefited from the
capabilities of an immutable ledger built around an audit-ready, transparent operations model.

Blockchain infrastructure is often instantiated in the public (everyone has access to read/write) or permission (a select set of entities have access to writing) mode of functioning and is managed by a governing entity. The governance of a blockchain deployment can be a consortium of interested stakeholders or any other type of body. This creates an ecosystem of participants who contribute resources to operate and manage the blockchain infrastructure built around a distributed set of participating nodes, a consensus algorithm, and the governance infrastructure.

The immutable nature of this ledger means that now all records anchored on the blockchain can be examined to determine the original author, the intended objective, and the timestamp. For example, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has a standard called Verifiable Credentials, which a service provider can use to enable an issuer of a record to issue a credential to a recipient digitally. This means that an examination of the transaction can help a verifier identify the author of the record, the intended recipient, as well as whether the integrity of the record is intact.

The immutable nature of the blockchain means that any new record will create a new entry rather than overwrite an existing record. There are additional technicalities however, this presents a sea-change from the existing model of attempting to query, verify and authenticate the validity and authenticity of any record in hand.

If we return to the challenge of dealing with false claims during hiring, verifiable credentials anchored on a blockchain present a good forward-looking path to adopt. Hiring companies can now use machine-to-machine interactions to verify records and include consent-based mechanisms to comply with current and emerging data governance regulations. This presents many opportunities for analytics to be drawn regarding the kinds of high-value credentials for a particular role, creating taxonomies for roles such that applicants can design and share a digital version of their resumes backed with easily verifiable credentials. Blockchains as digital public infrastructure reshape trustworthy transactions by enabling registries of authorized issuers of credentials and other kinds of data registries. These registries eliminate the need for third-party verification systems and replace them with an immutable, auditable and transparent ledger of data transactions.

There are many new and emerging areas where blockchain technology and digitally verifiable credentials empower the recipients of records – the end consumers to seek and respond to opportunities that have not been available. With digital wallets, which ease the receipt, storage and exchange of credentials, the reimagination of workflows from a high-cost fraud detection system to a more modern system focused on building innovative services can be brought about.