Adents launches NovaTrack: 'Blockchain will help secure certain parts of track and trace'

20-Jun-2018 - Last updated on 20-Jun-2018 at 14:28 GMT

(Image: Getty/ismagilov)

Adents has combined artificial intelligence and Microsoft Blockchain-based technology to help secure and analyse transactions across the supply chain.

Adents has partnered with Microsoft to develop NovaTrack, an open, unit-level track and trace platform designed to secure distribution chains and life cycles.

According to Adents, the technology brings together Microsoft’s Blockchain platform, artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and serialisation functionalities.

“NovaTrack is a combination of technological layers that together deliver an end-to-end secure Blockchain service,” said Adents CEO Christophe Devins.

“Identity, authentication, ciphering, consensus, smart contracts, infrastructure – compute and storage – will be embedded into the solutions so that enterprises will focus only on business matters,” he told us.

“Any kind of business that needs to track and trace its products to fight against counterfeiting, grey market or wants to reinsure its final customers about the product authenticity will be potential NovaTrack customers," Devins said.

Blockchain also will help to secure aspects of the track and trace process, he added.

Blockchain privacy?

While it has been argued that Blockchain’s innate public nature does not make it the ‘perfect fit’ for use across the digital supply chain, Devins said the ledger’s encryption keeps data secure.

“The distributed ledger is public and anyone can access it, but what [stakeholders and others] can find is a bunch of letters and numbers that have no meaningful sense without a private key,” he explained.

Concerning Bitcoin – a Blockchain-based cryptocurrency – transactions for example, the ledger stores the transaction amount and a ‘hash.’

Devins explained: “That hash is a code obtained by running the actual transaction details through a one-way cryptographic function. With just a hash, it is not possible to have access to more information about the transaction."

“In comparison, the system most banks use today is less secure, containing more customer information with each transaction,” he said.

Unlike the Bitcoin network, NovaTrack offers consortium and private Blockchain options. “You don’t need to share confidential information on the Blockchain if you don’t want to. If you want your data to stay confidential, you can choose to use a private Blockchain,” said Devins.