How FireStarter provides unprecedented security and removes privacy issues with Blockchain technology.
After every document sharing process, a classic data room provider provides you with a certificate and a sealed USB, DVD or hard drive for the parties to prove the exact state of the documents shared and disclosed at the moment on which parties are satisfied with the shared documents upon which they rely to conclude their agreement and which are in most cases an attachment to that agreement.
In such cases in which the data are used as an attachment to evidence disclosures to an agreement, the data room provider acts as the source of trust on which the parties have to rely to authentify the state of the data room and it’s contents on the moment on which the parties ask the data room provider to close the data room and issue a USB, DVD or other storage device together with a certificate of authentication.
In some cases, a physical copy of the data room is then send to the different parties involved (lawyers, corporate finance advisors, etc…). When you send a USB key to the other side of the world, the object is handled on many different places and by many different persons. There is chance your confidential data get lost or stolen during transport or when you don’t store it in a secure place. Potentially resulting in a data privacy breach. In addition and more practically, access to the data room has ended for all parties which makes it burdensome to access the data which was once shared.
FireStarter tackles these security and privacy issues, so you don’t have to
Whenever you seal a FireStarter data room, you’ll receive a secured zip folder of the data room which is behind a security wall. The hash (being the unique ID) of the zip folder is being stored in the Blockchain for which you’ll receive a certificate indicating time and location of the unique ID n the blockchain. FireStarter is using the Blockchain as an alternative for the certificate which goes with the DVD or USB key.
The Blockchain is a distributed and immutable data storage. FireStarter is not the owner of the blockchain. And you do not need FireStarter to view your sealing key and compare it to the one you received on your certificate. The blockchain is acting as the source of trust enabling you at any time to compare the hash of the zip folder (and thus its content) to the one which was stored in the blockchain.
If someone would make the slightest change in the zip folder which contains the sealed data, the blockchain won’t recognise it as being the data set for which a hash was stored in the blockchain. In other words: parties will at any time being able to independently verify whether or not the zip folder they want to use to evidence their disclosures, is in fact the exact same one as they agreed upon when reaching their agreement and sealing it in the blockchain.
Conclusion: no more need for certified USB keys or DVD’s with all the security and privacy hazards that they contain and no more need to rely on a third party for certification. in addition: your data room remains at all time consultable after sealing it.
How does it work? What gets stored in the blockchain?
When you seal your Binder, FireStarter converts the full document structure in to one single zip file.
After this process FireStarter creates a unique hash, based on the content of the zip file. To create this hash FireStarter is using an open source algorithm (SHA-256).
The algorithm only works in one direction. It is impossible to recover the content of the zip file based on the hash publically stored in the blockchain. But if you have access to the zip file which is AES 256 encypted on S3 (in other words: stored in the most secure circumstances) you can create the hash on your own and compare it to the one stored in the blockchain to prove the authenticity of your data.
FireStarter stores this hash in the Ethereum/Bitcoin blockchain and delivers you the result of this process as a certificate.
What can you evidence?
You can verify the authenticity of the documents at the moment of sealing.
Firestarter automatically sends (i) the zip file and (ii) the blockchain certificate to the owners and involved parties of the project which you select. The blockchain certificate indicates the position and hash in the blockchain.
Everyone can apply the algorithm to the zip file to create the hash. This hash needs to be the same as the one stored in the blockchain.
For example: If you change a single character in a single file, the outcome of this algorithm calculation will deliver a totally different hash. And you can proof the data is not authentic.
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