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AndySilvey
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Welcome to the latest blog in the series on SAP and Enterprise Blockchain.

Hopefully you've all had a great summer and are full of energy and ready to go for the sprint to the end of the year, so let's bring all of our energy and get great things done.

In my journey with Enterprise Blockchain, I was talking to a CSP Telco in Norway who came with this Enterprise Blockchain use case which was new for me and a good one. It is easy to implement and extremely effective, difficulty is easy and impact is high, what's not to like πŸ™‚ They've implemented it, by the way, and it works.

So, what's the scoop ?

As I previously wrote here Cyber Security and Resilience are no long about High Availability and Disaster Recovery, our HyperScalers have all of the capacity we could ever need and can spin up capacity on demand.

The threat these days is less that Hackers wants to steal our Data, and more that Hackers wants to simply mess up our Data so that our Business cannot Operate, rather than stealing they just want to put a spanner in the works  so to speak.

 

Credit: https://funkyenglish.com/idiom-throw-spanner-works/Credit: https://funkyenglish.com/idiom-throw-spanner-works/

 

Just imagine if a Hacker messed up the Data of an Airline, planes wouldn't be able to fly, if a Hacker messed up the Data of a Pharmaceutical company, there would be no medicines, if a Hacker messed up the Data of a Groceries company, there would be nothing to eat.

 

What's the Risk ?

In the same way that Fire Fighters prepare for fires, having the latest equipment and training, and assuming unfortunately that there will one day be a fire...

As part of our BCP Business Continuity Planning we must assume that one day our Organisation will be the victim of a Hacker, and the Operational SAP Applications will be down and will need to be Restored from Backup.

And here's the question, how can we be sure that the Hacker hasn't messed with our Backup File(s) ?

You want to Restore from Backup, but there is a doubt that the Hacker has messed with the Backup File, how can you be sure, which Backup file you can trust as the good one ?

And this is the Risk, can you Trust the originality and integrity of your Backup file(s) ?

 

What's the Solution ?

How can we guarantee that we know whether or not the Backup File(s) have been messed with ?

This is easy, we think about our use case or our demand and we look in our Enterprise Technology Standards for the technology which is the most suited to guaranteeing that Data can be trusted

And we find our Enterprise Blockchain Technology Standard.

So how can we use our Enterprise Blockchain which is running on the SAP BTP Kyma to guarantee that we know if we can trust the integrity and originality of our Backup files ?

This is so easy it's like boiling an egg,

tl;dr; we run a Hash over the Backup file and store the Hash output in the Enterprise Blockchain where it is super safely protected thanks to the special characteristics of the Blockchain (Immutable, Hash Mechanism, Distributed, Consensus Mechanism), and perish the thought, in the event of a BCP scenario, where we need to Recover with a Backup, we run a new Hash over the Backup file and compare the new Hash to the old Hash (which is safely  stored in the Blockchain to protect the integrity and originality of the Hash) and we see if the two Hashes are the same, if they are the same we are good to go with the Restore from Backup, if they are different then we go to the next Backup File and do the same again until we find a Backup File that we can trust.

And the long answer for those of us who are interested in the finer details...

Voila.... bring in the Enterprise Blockchain Platform Wallet. The best Enterprise Blockchain Platform products include what is called the Enterprise Blockchain Platform Wallet, or to make it shorter, the Enterprise Blockchain Wallet.

The Enterprise Blockchain Wallet enables us to store large Data, like large Files safely and securely off the chain, or 'Off-Chain'. 

But if we store the large Data files Off-Chain in the Enterprise Blockchain Wallet, then how do we also have them some how on the Enterprise Blockchain Database ?

The way this works is elegant, in any decent Enterprise Blockchain Platform, the Enterprise Blockchain Wallet location is completely configurable, and could be anywhere from SAP HANA Cloud (Data Lake), or for example multiple hyperscaler object stores, such as Amazon S3, OSS (Alicloud Object Storage Service), SAP HANA Cloud, Data Lake, and Azure Blob Storage.

The configurable Enterprise Blockchain Wallet of the Enterprise Blockchain Platform looks like this:

 

Enterprise Blockchain running on SAP BTP Kyma with Enterprise Blockchain WalletEnterprise Blockchain running on SAP BTP Kyma with Enterprise Blockchain Wallet

 

Ok, so we've got the Backup File stored in the (configurable) Enterprise Blockchain Wallet, but what about securing the Backup File Data ? Obviously the Enterprise Blockchain Wallet storage location has built in security, for example the SAP HANA Cloud, the AWS S3 Buckets, but we need more than the out of the box security of these products, the reason we are using the Enterprise Blockchain Database is because of the amazing security strengths that it natively out of the box has, and so, what about the Enterprise Blockchain Wallet, doesn't the Enterprise Blockchain Platform have some cool super hard way of protecting the data in the Enterprise Blockchain Wallet ?

Well yes it does, this is the magic of Enterprise Blockchain Database 'Off-Chain' storage in the Enterprise Blockchain Wallet. This is so unique to Blockchain Technologies.

What happens is this, when store data in the Enterprise Blockchain Wallet, the Enterprise Blockchain Platform software runs a hash algorithm over the data that we have stored and the data, and the large file gets hashed:

 

AndySilvey_1-1726914595529.png

 

The Backup File in the Enterprise Blockchain Wallet gets Hashed, and then, that Hash is stored in the Enterprise Blockchain Database.

This means we now have a unique Hash of that Backup File, and if anybody or anything makes even the tiniest teeniest change to that data or file, next time we run a Hash over that data or file the result will be different that the original Hash which is safely stored in the Enterprise Blockchain Database and this is how we will know that the data has been changed and we cannot trust the Data and therefore we cannot use it for Restoring our System.

On the other hand, if just before we plan to run the Restore from Backup with the Backup File from the Enterprise Blockchain Wallet, if we run a Hash over the Data and the Hash result is the same as we have in the Hash which is stored safely in Enterprise Blockchain Database, then we will know we can trust the Backup File and we can use it for our System Restore from Backup.

 

Enterprise Blockchain running on SAP BTP Kyma protecting SAP S/4HANA Backup IntegrityEnterprise Blockchain running on SAP BTP Kyma protecting SAP S/4HANA Backup Integrity

 

 

And this is why, for all of these reasons, 

Trustable S/4HANA Backups depend of storing a Hash of the Backup File in the  Enterprise Blockchain

 

Enterprise Blockchain is:

. The Digital Transformation of Information Security 

. The Next Generation Data Integrity, Originality, Confidentiality Protection

. Re-imagining Information Security

. Natively, out of the box, due to its special characteristics the strongest, hardest, most resilient Enterprise Database product 

 

Enterprise Blockchain is both:

. a Secure Store

. a Secure Communication Channel

 

The configurable Enterprise Blockchain Wallet enables you to store Big Data 'Off-Chain' and the hashes of the Big Data are stored safely and securely on the Enterprise Blockchain Database.

And this is Why I love SAP and Blockchain Databases and why you should too πŸš€

The good news is, as we discussed in the previous blog, this is no longer hype, we can do all of this today, and now, within the SAP Partner Edge Open EcoSystem there are enabling technology Blockchain Products designed and built by SAP Experts specifically for the needs of SAP Customers to make doing Blockchain and SAP easy, and so you can do SAP and Blockchain, today it's real and there's nothing stopping you. Here's a how to guide which you can use to try this today with the SAP BTP Kyma Trial and Enterprise....

So what are we waiting for ? Oh yeah, more use cases, ok, that will be the next blog. 

What do you think, are the words AI, Blockchain, Web3, Distributed Ledger Technology, starting to appear in your Company's visions and technology visions ? What use cases are you looking at ? Let's chat about it in the comments.

For now, over and out.

Andy Silvey.

Independent SAP Technical Architect and CEO of atkrypto

Author Bio:

Andy Silvey is a 25 years SAP Technology veteran [15 years SAP Basis and 10 years SAP Tech Arch including Tech, Integration, Security, Data from 3.1H to S/4HANA PCE on RISE and the BTP and everything in between, and former SCN Moderator and Mentor alumni].

Andy is also co-Founder of atkrypto inc, an startup whose ambition is to make Blockchain easy for Enterprise.

atkrypto's flagship product is the atkrypto Enterprise Blockchain Platform for SAP,  and atkrypto is a SAP Partner Edge Open EcoSystem Partner. 

The atkrypto Enterprise Blockchain Platform for SAP has been designed by SAP Independent Experts for the needs of SAP Customers and to be deployed on the SAP BTP Kyma Runtime Service and leverage native integration to SAP Products.

atkrypto Enterprise Blockchain Platform for SAP has a number of unique qualities, including being the only Blockchain software in the world which has a DataCenter version and a light mobile version which can run on Edge/IoT/Mobile devices and enables data to be written to the Blockchain at the Edge where that same Blockchain is running on a Server in the DataCenter, protecting the integrity and originality of data from the Edge to Insights. Taking Blockchain to the Data at the Edge instead of taking the Data to the Blockchain.

 

 

 

 

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