Xerox Corp. announced that it has secured a patent for a blockchain-driven auditing system for electronic files.
The Norwalk-headquartered company initially filed its patent with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in August 2017. According to Xerox, the newly patented technology is designed to determine whether a blockchain file has been altered and can track the history of changes made. The system cannot be altered due to its decentralized verification mechanism. Xerox said the technology can be used for maintaining confidential data in the medical, financial, educational and criminal investigation fields.
The technology will also “allow record owners to recover work that may have been altered or destroyed from more traditional control systems and pinpoint the exact moment when things went wrong,” Xerox said in its patent filing, noting that individuals “who would alter or destroy these records are normally highly motivated and may only need a little knowledge of database hacking or someone else”™s passwords to achieve their goal.”
Xerox filed an earlier patent request in 2016 on a similar system that sought to create a blockchain-based timestamp protocol for data such as copies or pictures, which could be presented as evidence in court cases.
