Samsung SDS Unveils Its Corporate Blackchain Platform ‘Nexledger’

Samsung SDS is set to enter a blockchain business by launching commercialized services for digital identification, payment, document verification based on blockchain platform for enterprises.

The IT services arm of Samsung Group unveiled the blockchain security platform Nexledger at a press briefing held in its headquarters in Seoul on April 6.

"The corporate valuable assets can be digitized and protected by blockchain technology," Song Kwang-woo, vice president for finance consulting and distributed ledger technology at Samsung SDS said at the briefing, adding, “If the financial industry adopts the technology, it easily enables self-certification without accredited certificates, point transaction with card companies and verification of digital documents, and so on.”

Actually, the company has test-run Nexledger as a joint project with its affiliate Samsung Card since last October. It already launched an electronic document verification system in February this year and is now developing a membership authentication service using blockchain identification. It plans to launch various blockchain-based services like membership points sharing.

As a kind of distributed ledger system, blockchain is a next generation security technology that enables every user to share (or chain) the ledger data (or blocks) and prevents the forgery. The financial industry is considering to adopt the system as an alternative for authentication security since it can prevent a counterfeit or falsification of all the data or deals transacted in real time, incapacitating hackings actually. The technology was originally developed for the virtual currency Bitcoin, but its application can be extended to other sectors beyond financial industry.

Samsung SDS will support for blockchain services to be used as infrastructure for the public sector as well as the private sector, including finance, manufacturing and logistics. “We will expand the use of Nexledger to other industries and strive to develop new markets fit for the 4th Industrial Revolution by integrating the Blockchain technology with other cutting-edge IT technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of the Things (IoT),” said Hong Won-pyo, CEO of solution business at Samsung SDS.  . 

The Nexledger has an open source architecture for higher compatibility with the cloud system of Samsung and those of third-party providers such as Amazon Web Service and Microsoft. Based on the cloud network, the blockchain platform supports diverse services such as real-time transaction monitoring, user authentication security, payment settlement, mobile finance concierge, global warranty and trade finance, according to Samsung SDS.

The company also presented its biometric authentication solution called Nexsign based on the Nexledger platform. The solution realizes large transactions, which the traditional blockchains cannot handle, automatic safety-secured smart contracts, and management controls, etc. It also allows users to have access to various financial services with just one single authentication as the biometric information is encrypted in the blockchain platform.

Samsung SDS began to research the blockchain technologies in 2015 by organizing a specialized team. It joined global blockchain development consortium Hyperledger last year, while investing in UK-based cybersecurity startup Darktrace and Korean blockchain platform operator Blocko.