Edgewhere
Ensuring Data Integrity with Blockchain

In the fierce competition between companies to gain the trust of consumers, obtaining the consent of the interlocutor has become a key element of responsible communication. It has become crucial for organisations to abide by the stringent regulatory laws like GDPR in Europe and keep pace with consumers’ demands in attaining more power in the relationship they share with companies and their brands. This is where technologies like blockchain can make a difference. Blockchain has more to it than just cryptocurrencies. For the consumer, the blockchain is still too often reduced to the latter, and in particular to Bitcoins. While specialists know that this technology is inherently secure, the battle that some states or financial institutions are waging to pass off the blockchain as a source of dangerous abuses and promoting fraudulent behaviour can do collateral damage to the other types of blockchain, even though they are a part of a virtuous dynamic of reinsurance.

To put an end to these speculations, Edgewhere creates technological solutions for businesses that enable them to secure the use and integrity of customers’ individual data and improve consumers’ confidence through blockchain. Since “trust doesn’t exclude control”, Edgewhere also provides companies with the opportunity to give the power of control back to their customers over their data. Communication tools thus become a means of building trust and mutual respect, essential elements of a balanced, lasting and fruitful relationship.

“The adoption of blockchain comes with its fair share of challenges and costs for the general public. In our case, massive consumer support is one of the keys to the success of our consent management system. The more consumers there will be, the more businesses will be compelled to play the game, and the stronger the positive dynamic will become,” says Cyril Dever, CEO and chief innovation officer at Edgewhere. The company first revolutionised the world of personal contact data processing by inventing the principle of pseudonymised processing of client files; thanks to its tutsht^® service—a preventative and curative data processing SaaS solution. “No processing is now carried out without protecting the data from end to end. We never see the source data, our partners cannot reconstitute the files of our clients, and our clients recover encrypted data which can be decoded only by them. This is what guided our innovation. The consent management blockchain is just the logical extension of this conception,” he adds.

The adoption of blockchain comes with its fair share of challenges and costs for the general public. In our case, massive consumer support is one of the keys to the success of our consent management system

With its novel solution, Edgewhere helped an eminent company in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) space to exploit the full power of both its CRM tools and its network of data providers without compromising the security of its database in order to optimise its prospecting campaigns. Edgewhere provided the client with a matching and filtering tool based on its patented contact data pseudonymisation technology which allows them to select each month a list of contacts based on profiles established by their marketing teams. By manipulating more than half a dozen files, each containing more than 120 million lines, without ever handling unencrypted data or even providing service providers with any information on the client’s database, Edgewhere enabled the creation of more efficient and better targeted campaigns while enforcing maximum data protection.

Edgewhere deploys blockchain as the underlying database because it corresponds to everything that is to be expected from a consent management service: a technology that is secure by design, opposable to third parties and yet sufficiently flexible and open to allow smooth integration into existing processes and architectures. As the name suggests, Rooot^®, the company’s blockchain consent system, is based on what is most profound and personal: consent to the use of data, and in particular, contact data of those that reach out personally. Not stopping at just inventing its blockchain protocol, Edgewhere has pushed the boundaries of its system by adding for the first time the concept of the right to be forgotten by design in a blockchain. With the Rooot^® blockchain, the right to be forgotten is no longer some kind of regulatory wishful thinking; it is an operational solution that allows companies to move from speech to action through responsible communication.

Dever sheds light on a crucial topic, saying, “Today we are showing the way with our consent management blockchain, but what about tomorrow? Should we go as far as what is called “data heritage”? Or be even more operational by opening up to other fields such as artificial intelligence or IoT which are becoming increasingly central to our lives every day?” For Edgewhere, the answer is in the question, and the company aims to work on a daily basis to develop new solutions that will meet these challenges.