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Using ICME to manage and store business documents on the Internet Computer blockchain can bring tremendous advantages.

These advantages include providing document verification, affordable and permanent on-chain storage, and integration with other systems to support automation. More details about these benefits are available in our blog, Improving Document Management with NFTs.

Storing documents and data on the Internet Computer blockchain also has numerous privacy, security, and data-integrity benefits.

Fig. 1 Security benefits of on-chain storage

Privacy

Any documents or data stored on chain can be made private and selectively shared with parties based on their roles (e.g, admin, owner, user). Neither the website link, nor the PDF, nor or any on-chain data is publicly searchable nor hackable by any practical means.

Reading data from, or writing data to, the blockchain does not reveal the identity of the party. Unless specified, the blockchain does not record anything about who is reading data. Writing data is done pseudonymously.

Security

Although data on blockchain is replicated across data centers, all communication to and within the blockchain is encrypted using enterprise-grade transport layer security. Multi-party computation can also be added to provide the strongest possible assurances of data security.

Operators of data centers are prevented from accessing the data running their machines due to legally-required security measures and incentives. Further robust data protections can be added including onion routing and secure hardware enclaves.

Integrity and Risk Transparency

Without writing a line of code, ICME enables users to create smart contracts that store data in a way that is completely immutable. The result is to make it impossible to alter on-chain documents or delete on-chain data.

The relevant code is also open sourced so that parties can easily determine the safeguards placed on how data can be viewed, shared, and with what parties. This can provide complete assurance that certain cybersecurity risks have been eliminated.

Getting Started

To store documents on chain, you can use ICME to upload a PDF of the document and attach a unique identifier to the document. Text and data from the document can also be stored on chain as the document's metadata in the description field.

An example of an on-chain document is a PDF of a Letter of Credit between Baker Hughes and JP Morgan.

Please contact us if you have any questions.