- Decentralisation and its concepts
- Personal Data Management: Promise of Decentralisation
- Decentralised Personal Data Management Challenges and General Considerations
The social use of the internet and, particularly, the social use of portable devices, implies an extensive turning of people, companies, and states about personal data.
Sharing data has become inevitable since data is a valuable tool in managing organisations in today’s highly technological world; therefore, how we manage the information we input on our personates’ accounts is more important than anything.
Perhaps one of the most groundbreaking developments in recent times that has the characteristic ability to disrupt personal data management is decentralisation.
Democratisation, especially using blockchain and distributed networks, opens new opportunities to prevent and regulate the utilisation of personal data and guarantee increased and more open ownership of such data to individuals.
As such, this article will focus on the idea of decentralisation of PCs, both for its pros and cons, as well as its likely effects on the future of data security.
Decentralisation and its concepts
For real, decentralisation means that instead of having a single point of control, several stations work towards controlling or regulating it.
A centralised scope is also an obvious characteristic where the data is a centralised collection owned by a company, state, or service company. This may be social sites, cloud services, or even any banking institution. These entities decide who gets to keep your data, where that data will be stored, and how it will be used.
On the other hand, decentralisation organises the management of the data across several participants or nodes of a network with no control exclusively in one single centre.
This can often be achieved with the help of such things as blockchain, P2P, and distributed ledger. These technologies make a difference in assuring that certain data is archived and processed in a way that is relatively non-compromisable, transparent, and immune from censorship.
The four main features are data privacy, authenticity, and integrity of data, and the other is the employment of cryptographic techniques for decentralisation.
The major characteristics of decentralised systems of distribution of value are as follows: Users own their data, and consensus authorises information exchanges and transactions, not a central trusted body.
Personal Data Management: Promise of Decentralisation
1. More Data Privacy and Control
Among the most decisive advantages of decentralisation in managing personal data is the giving of individuals control of personal data. In centralised systems, the central databases store personal information, which users have little control over who they can access or how it can be used.
On the other hand, decentralised systems let people handle their data without intermediaries. The blockchain can enhance consumer power by allowing them to store their information securely within the confines of an encrypted structure and controlling when, where, and with whom this figure should be shared.
Individuals are able to use self-sovereign identities (SSIs) through non-centralised identity management without being dependent on any centralised authority or service provider.
By doing this, users can use these SSIs to authenticate and verify identity between disparate platforms more securely and privately than before.
2. Data Sovereignty
Decentralisation effectively increases individual autonomy and ownership over one’s data. As further clarification, data sovereignty is defined as an individual’s legal entitlement to their data, for example, its definition and usage, irrespective of geographical borders, authorities, or regulations.
Decentralisation allows users to manage how their data is portrayed and how it is viewed by others, allowing users to manage their interactions with the platform in very specific ways, including what access they share when they wish to retract consent and how their data will be used.
This is especially important where data privacy regulations are stricter than in the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In such a system, data owners would have full control over what data about them is recorded, in compliance with data regulations, and exercising data rights without intermediaries.
3. Transparency and Trust
Transparency in personal data management may be increased by decentralization. For example, in a centralised system, people often don’t know what happens to their data nor if and how it was sold to third parties. The network of blockchain technology itself is naturally transparent and auditable.
Every participant can view and review every transaction or data exchange recorded in a public ledger. This transparency can promote trust because people have a chance to look at exactly how their data is handled, so they can see if they’re being played or taken for a ride.
As an example, with decentralised applications (dApps) on top of the blockchain, individuals could verify the data integrity and purpose of data exchanges without trusting a single entity.
Conditions on data sharing are enforced automatically by smart contracts, which also increases the transparency and trust in the processes by setting the requirements for the coding agreement.
4. Reduced Risk of Data Breaches
Data breaches are a big concern in the traditional centralised system. Data about you is almost always stored in big centralised repositories, so a breach of one central office can reveal millions of people’s information.
Data is spread across many nodes, lessening the risk of something going wrong at a single point and decreasing the chance of an entire network being compromised by hackers.
Furthermore, when using decentralised systems, cryptographic techniques are frequently used to secure data, making it more secure and private for the information of the users.
For example, using blockchain technology can also ensure that data can’t be tampered with once it’s placed in the ledger. This gives another layer of safety that transparent centralised databases cannot offer.
5. Monetising the Data User-Centric
In a world of decentralisation, data might be able to be paid for by people, straight out, without the kind of intermediaries that advertisers or brokers provide being worked with.
In other words, their data could one day be decided to be shared by users in return for rewards or payments. How their data is utilised may be tracked and managed by users of blockchain-based systems while also receiving remuneration.
In contrast to the present centralised data economy, personal data is profited from by companies such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon without compensating contributors.
By decentralising the manners in which data management works, control over their data would be regained by users, and in turn, they could benefit financially from the use of the data in question.
Decentralised Personal Data Management Challenges and General Considerations
Decentralisation is a really big promise when it comes to solving personal data management, but there are a multitude of challenges and considerations that have to be addressed first.
1. Scalability and Performance
Scalability is one of the key problems of decentralised systems, particularly with blockchain-based systems.
On the other hand, traditional centralised systems, although difficult to close security leaks, can accept millions of users and transactions without problems, while it often becomes difficult for decentralised systems to manage high-capacity problems, especially with massive amounts of data.
In particular, blockchain networks are typically slow and expensive to use, because every transaction must be verified and recorded in multiple nodes of the network.
To overcome these scalability issues, efforts are underway on sharding (breaking the network into smaller and more manageable pieces) and layer 2 protocols (rolls on top of existing blockchains to increase blockchains throughput). Yet scalability is still a sticking point for decentralised systems.
2. Usability and Adoption
The common user frequently becomes lost in sophisticated and difficult-to-navigate decentralised systems.
Blockchain technology has come a long way in the past few years, and decentralised applications (dApps) have advanced as well—but user interfaces and experiences for people who aren’t familiar with the technology are still quite unintuitive.
On top of that, crypto and encrypted tokens, as well as the need for users to manage private keys in decentralised systems, can be confusing or intimidating.
To make decentralised personal data management pervasive, we need user-friendly solutions and interfaces. Procedures include making it easier to manage digital identities, data preferences, and access limits.
3. Existing Systems Interoperability
Interoperability between a decentralised system and the existing centralised infrastructure is yet another challenge with decentralization. Most organisations and governments are still heavily depending on centralised databases and data storage solutions.
These legacy systems may be difficult to integrate with decentralised personal data management systems, which would make it very difficult to integrate decentralised synchronous aggregation tools with these legacy systems and change the legal frameworks, data sharing protocols, and technical standards that are required.
Additionally, decentralised identity management should follow a standardised approach to make decentralised systems communicate and share data on multiple platforms and services.
4. Legal and Regulatory Issues
Decentralised personal data management also means there are questions to be raised about legal and regulatory frameworks for the new.
However, the rights that protect us from invasion of our privacy are often based on centralised models. For example, data protection regulations such as GDPR were developed with centralised data repositories in place—with a defined data controller.
In a distributed system where data is spread among multiple nodes, it’s not always clear who is responsible for complying with data protection laws when there’s a data exchange between foreign entities.
Conclusion
The introduction of decentralisation to personal data management has the promise of reimagining how we will protect, own, and share our personal information. Decentralisation is a possible alternative to current centralised data storage structures because it offers improved privacy, higher user control, greater transparency, and fewer data breaches.
However, there are many difficulties to deal with—scalability, usability, interoperability, and legal compliance. If these technologies can be developed successfully and they support legal and regulatory frameworks, the future of decentralised personal data management will be under their control.
A world where people can eventually own and control their data is offered by decentralisation, opening the way for a future of privacy, security, and integrity.
The next steps include the development of robust and scalable, decentralized solutions that can improve the user experience and collaboration with the tech industry, regulators, and users to maximize the gains of decentralizing.