American tech giant Seagate enters the pilot stage of its blockchain project designed to fight counterfeit hard disk drives (HDD), as reported by Forbes on July 30.

Seagate and IBM collaborated to launch a project in last November that aimes at helping manufacturers, integrators and business partners to simplify and better authenticate the provenance of HDDs by using IBM’s Blockchain Platform.

As per Seagate’s data security research group managing technologist Manuel Offenberg, IBM pilot “is both the customer of these drives, as well as the technology provider for the underlying Hyperledger Fabric platform”. Seagate’s blockchain is designed to improve the supply chain of hard drives and track products to the customers and back to the company in the event of a return.

Protecting Personal Data

Seagate further intended to ensure that HDDs returned due to defects contain no customer personal data. Employing the so-called “certified erase” as a solution, Offenberg added that the company wants “to make sure that these devices have no PII [personally identifiable information] data on them,” adding:

“When a drive fills in a customer’s system and the drive comes back as part of its returns process, if we can prove that the drive was cryptographically erased, and therefore, the information is no longer on the device, then, from a risk perspective, this reverse supply chain can treat that device differently.”

Offenberg elaborated over the preliminary work with IBM stating that the company is “involving the cryptographic identity of the device in the blockchain transaction, such that the digital trust of the product itself is part of the transaction.” As per him, Seagate plans to extend its partner network in the reverse supply chain.

According to a study by the market research and consulting firm Allied Market Research, the global blockchain supply chain market is expected to reach over $9 billion by 2025

Read more:Major Indian Trade Organization Speaks Out Against Proposed Crypto Ban

Image Source – Seagate Twitter