'Blockchain technology's mass adoption problem can be solved through a multi-framework platform and interconnected environments,' believes Yifan He

Yifan He, CEO of Red Date Technology, introduces us to their Blockchain-based Service Network and discusses how they hope to use blockchain technology to truly unleash the power of invention. Read on to know more about their partnership with China Mobile and China UnionPay as well as their smart city project ‘Five Sources Plan’.

The two core issues holding back the mass adoption of blockchain technology today are cost and interoperability.

MEDIA 7: Could you please tell us a little bit about yourself and your professional career?
YIFAN HE:
I’m Yifan He, the founder and CEO of Red Date Technology, the architect firm behind Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN), the fastest growing global blockchain infrastructure project in the past two years. I’m a serial entrepreneur and investor. For all my career, I have been working for my own companies. Back in 1998, I founded my first internet company at college in the US and spent more than ten years in private equity and finance in China. I graduated from SUNY at Stony Brook with a computer science degree and an MBA degree from MIT. In 2014, I founded Red Date Technology, working on smart city projects. We collaborated with China Mobile and China UnionPay to develop a mobile app-Citizen Card. Later in 2019, Red Date, State Information Center, China Mobile, and China UnionPay started the BSN project and pivoted to the blockchain.


M7: What is Red Date Technology’s contribution to creating and developing China’s Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN)?
YH:
When I first started to research and understand blockchain technology in 2018, I knew that this technology would change the world in the future. However, there was no infrastructure at that time to support the “Blockchain Internet.” So, in September 2018, I envisioned building the BSN, a cross-portal, cross framework, and cross-cloud blockchain infrastructure to power all kinds of decentralized applications. Prior to the BSN project, Red Date has spent years on smart city projects, which helps Red Date to build the technical capacity for the BSN project as one of the four founding members and the key architect firm behind BSN. Red Date develops all the relevant software and owns all the IPs that facilitate the network. More specifically, Red Date is responsible for developing the software architecture for BSN International, the global part of the network, which promises greater interoperability with relevant blockchain regulations and laws around the world.

We are also tasked with directing the international marketing strategy for BSN, including launching new markets, facilitating cooperation, and leading the marketing campaigns. Beyond that, Red Date has set up a foundation in Singapore to manage BSN International’s future projects and technical roadmaps. Red Date will be one of the foundation's five founding directors, and the other four will be international technology leaders. So far, we have integrated almost all the mainstream consortium blockchain frameworks such as HyperLedger Fabric, Besu, FISCO BCOS, XuperChain, CITA, ConcenSys Quorum, Chain33, HyperLedger Besu, and supports public blockchains like Ethereum, IRISnet, ShareRing, etc. in BSN International. In addition, we have expanded to South Korea, Turkey and launched BSN international portals. We plan to make BSN International open source in two to three years to benefit more developers worldwide.

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Keep doing what you have been doing and have faith in it, everything will turn out fine.



M7: What do you hope to achieve with this Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN)?
YH:
The two core issues holding back the mass adoption of blockchain technology today are cost and interoperability. We aim to change the existing problem of the high cost of developing and deploying blockchain applications through a multi-framework platform and interconnected environments. In this way, we can truly unleash the power of innovation using blockchain technology.
The BSN can be thought of as a way to ‘hedge’ against the risk that one chain or platform in which an organization has invested resources becomes obsolete further down the line.

This is because the BSN places such a high emphasis on achieving systematic interoperability, and therefore the BSN provides a space where different blockchain technologies can interact and exchange data. The goal of the BSN is to enable companies, government agencies, financial institutions, and individuals to create blockchain applications at a low cost. We want to be the backbone of the digital infrastructure to realize interoperability between different blockchains and protocols. Ultimately, we want to contribute to the large-scale adoption of blockchain technology worldwide and make BSN a blockchain internet accepted globally within five years. Now, we are still working on it.


M7: Red Date Technology is in partnership with China Mobile and China UnionPay. How does this partnership help you meet the objectives of BSN?
YH:
China Mobile has been working on the IT infrastructure deployment and has been accelerating the rollout of 5G and the adoption of cloud services in China. In the BSN project, China Mobile is mainly responsible for developing and managing the BSN public city nodes in China, including the approval of new city nodes to the BSN and issuing access certificates to each city node owner in China. The BSN leverages China Mobile's centralized operations, data centres and local cloud resources to develop its blockchain cloud management technology that realizes the multi-cloud architecture on the BSN.

Talking about China UnionPay’s participation, they have been researching blockchain since 2015, especially underlying technologies. China UnionPay keeps exploring the adoption of blockchain in the financial industry and collaborates with commercial banks and payment institutions in China and worldwide, such as Alipay, Barclays Bank, ACI Worldwide, etc. Joining the BSN project is a turning point for China UnionPay to realize digital transformation using technology and data. China UnionPay is mainly responsible for investing and constructing BSN China's centralized ordering node services, operating and maintaining finance-related applications on different underlying frameworks. Besides, China UnionPay offers payment, transfer, and other financial assistance for the BSN China, facilitating and safeguarding the standardization of relevant financial services on the BSN.

There are three roles of China UnionPay in the construction of the BSN. First, China UnionPay will provide basic financial services such as financial payment and identity authentication for the BSN network. Second, this top payment provider will develop a set of financial standards and financial evaluation mechanisms for core technologies like smart contracts on the platform to accelerate the development of financial applications. Third, many financial portals will be built to bridge Chinese and more international financial institutions.

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The smart city project experience has gained a solid foundation for us to step into the blockchain industry later.



M7: What are some of the best smart city projects that you have managed at Red Date Technology before initiating the blockchain project?
YH
: Before the BSN project, Red Date first started with “smart city” projects in our infancy.  For example, we partnered with China Mobile and China UnionPay to develop Citizen Card for Zhangjiakou, a city with 4.5 million inhabitants that will co-host the 2022 Olympic Winter Games. Residents can use the all-in-one app to pay utility bills, check information about stores, keep track of transaction records and enjoy e-government services without visiting the office. Then, we spread to cities like Tonghua, Sheyang, etc.

Five Sources Plan, a smart city project led by China Mobile, consists of a smart citizen card 3.0 platform, an enterprise APP platform, and a mobile consumption points platform. It aims to provide information services for local governments to deal with people’s wellbeing and customized APP services and intelligent settlement services for local enterprises. Red Date is responsible for developing the smart citizen card 3.0 platform and settlement system.

Most of the Chinese tech companies are market-oriented or product-oriented, while we are a team that pays more attention to the underlying technology and makes efforts to develop technical infrastructures. The smart city project experience has gained a solid foundation for us to step into the blockchain industry later.


M7: Knowing what you now know, what would you advise your younger self?
YH:
Keep doing what you have been doing and have faith in it, everything will turn out fine.

ABOUT RED DATE TECHNOLOGY

Red Date Technology Co., Ltd. was founded in September 2014 and is one of the four founding members of the Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN).  Headquartered in Hong Kong, Red Date Technology is the technical architect behind the BSN and is responsible for the BSN’s R&D, daily operations, and maintenance.  In addition to playing a vital role in the BSN, Red Date Technology is a top-tier technology provider for building smart cities in China, in partnership with China Mobile and China UnionPay.

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Unlike disjointed point solutions and security appliances, Cato capabilities are instantly on, always available at scale, and fully converged, giving IT teams a single, shared context worldwide to understand their networks, prevent threats, and resolve problems. As an autonomous platform, Cato SASE Cloud sustains its evolution, resiliency, optimal performance, and security posture, saving enterprises the operational overhead of maintaining enterprise infrastructure. Enterprises simply subscribe to Cato to meet their business needs. Cato's cloud-native model revolutionized security and networking operations when it was introduced in 2016, a fact validated three years later in 2019 when the Cato approach was formally recognized by the industry as SASE. Breach Times Still Too Long; Limitations of Legacy XDR Cato is again revolutionizing cybersecurity with the first SASE platform to expand into threat detection, empowering security teams to become smarter and remediate incidents faster. The flood of security alerts triggered by network sensors, such as firewalls and IPS, complicates threat identification. In 2023, enterprises required 204 days on average to identify breaches.1 XDR tools help security analysts close this gap by ingesting, correlating, and contextualizing threat intelligence information with the data from native and third-party sensors. However, legacy XDR tools suffer from numerous problems relating to data quality. Sensor deployment extends the time-to-value as IT must not only install the sensors but also develop a baseline of specific organizational activity for accurate assessments. Data quality is also compromised when importing and normalizing third-party sensor data, complicating threat identification and incident response. Security analysts waste time sorting through incident stories to identify the ones most critical for immediate remediation. Once determined, incident remediation is often hampered by missing information, requiring analysts to master and switch between disparate tools. No wonder in 2023, average breach containment required more than two months.1 Cato XDR and Cato EPP Expands the Meaning of SASE Cato XDR addresses legacy XDR's limitations. Instantly activated globally, Cato XDR provides enterprises with immediate insights into threats on their networks. Incident detection is accurate due to Cato's many native sensors – NGFW, advanced threat prevention (IPS, NGAM, and DNS Security), SWG, CASB, DLP, ZTNA, RBI, and now EPP/EDR. Powered by Bitdefender's world-leading malware prevention technology, Cato EPP protects endpoints from attack – in the Cato way. Endpoint threat and user data are stored in the same converged Cato data lake as the rest of the customer's network data, simplifying cross-domain event correlation. The result is incredibly high-quality data that improves the incident identification and remediation process. Cato AI uses the data to accurately identify and rank incidents, empowering analysts to focus critical resources on an organization's most important remediation cases. Cato AI is battle-tested and proven across years of threat hunting and remediation handling by Cato MDR service agents. Remediation times reduce as detected incident stories contain the relevant information for in-depth investigation. Cato's tools sit in the same console as the native engines, enabling security analysts to view everything in one place -- the current security policy and the reviewed story. Finally, incident reporting is simplified with generative AI. Purpose-built for investigations, this natural language engine provides human-readable explanations of incident stories. Analysts save time sharing incident information with other teams and reporting to their managers.

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Network Security

Ampliphae, HPE Athonet and Arqit deliver Quantum-Safe Private 5G using Symmetric Key Agreement

PR Newswire | January 19, 2024

Arqit Quantum Inc, a leader in quantum-safe encryption, and Ampliphae Ltd (Ampliphae), a leader in network cyber security solutions, have today announced successful completion of a project that will deliver enhanced quantum-safe security for Private 5G networks. The Security Enhanced Virtualised Networking for 5G (SEViN-5G) project, funded by Innovate UK, the UK Government’s innovation agency, leveraged Ampliphae’s network security analytics technology and Arqit’s Symmetric Key Agreement Platform to deliver a quantum-secure Private 5G testbed that can protect against both current and future cyber threats. Athonet, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise acquisition, provided the Radio Access Network (RAN) equipment for the project with a cloud core hosted on AWS. Private enterprise networks based on 5G cellular technology are accelerating digital transformation across industries including manufacturing, healthcare, defence and smart cities. Private 5G gives enterprises access to high-speed, massively scalable, and ultra-reliable wireless connectivity, allowing them to implement innovative IoT and mobile solutions that enhance productivity, drive automation and improve customer engagement. The security of these networks will be paramount as they will support safety-critical infrastructure and carry highly sensitive data. But like any new technology, 5G comes with potential new threats and security risks including the threat from quantum computing. The project finished in December 2023 and customer engagement has already begun. David Williams, Arqit Founder, Chairman and CEO said: “Enterprises want to deploy Private 5G networks with complete confidence that they will be safe from both current and future cyber threats including from quantum computers. Working alongside Ampliphae, we have shown that a quantum-safe Private 5G network is deliverable using Arqit’s unique encryption technology.” Trevor Graham, Ampliphae CEO said: “Private 5G can be hosted partly or completely in the Cloud, giving enterprises the opportunity to rapidly set up their own cellular networks customised to support their operations. With Ampliphae and Arqit they can now be certain that those Private 5G networks are monitored and secure against eavesdropping and disruption.” Nanda Menon, Senior Advisor Hewlett Packard Enterprise said: “In an era where security is paramount, the completion of the SEViN-5G project is a significant milestone. The delivery of a quantum-secure Private 5G testbed, achieved where Athonet have combined the Athonet core with CableFree radios, underscores the commitment to innovation and reinforces the confidence enterprises can have in deploying networks that are both cutting-edge and secure from both present and future threats.” About Arqit Arqit Quantum Inc. (Nasdaq: ARQQ, ARQQW) (Arqit) supplies a unique encryption Platform as a Service which makes the communications links of any networked device, cloud machine or data at rest secure against both current and future forms of attack on encryption – even from a quantum computer. Compliant with NSA standards, Arqit’s Symmetric Key Agreement Platform delivers a lightweight software agent that allows devices to create encryption keys locally in partnership with any number of other devices. The keys are computationally secure and operate over zero trust networks. It can create limitless volumes of keys with any group size and refresh rate and can regulate the secure entrance and exit of a device in a group. The agent is lightweight and will thus run on the smallest of end point devices. The Product sits within a growing portfolio of granted patents. It also works in a standards compliant manner which does not oblige customers to make a disruptive rip and replace of their technology. Recognised for groundbreaking innovation at the Institution of Engineering and Technology awards in 2023, Arqit has also won the Innovation in Cyber Award at the National Cyber Awards and Cyber Security Software Company of the Year Award at the Cyber Security Awards. Arqit is ISO 27001 Standard certified. www.arqit.uk About Ampliphae Ampliphae’s distributed network analytics technology provides insight into how networks are used to support enterprise operations at every level. A graduate of the prestigious LORCA cyber accelerator in London, and the AWS European Defence Accelerator, Ampliphae’s technology is already used by enterprises across multiple verticals to discover, analyse and secure the network traffic that supports their key applications and business processes. Ampliphae’s Encryption Intelligence product operates at enterprise scale to discover devices and applications that use cryptography, analysing their encryption capabilities to detect risks, including assets that are vulnerable to future quantum computer attack. Using Encryption Intelligence, the organisation can gather effective operational intelligence about their encryption landscape, both within and outside the organisation, and build an effective mitigation program to address current and future vulnerabilities.

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Red Date Technology

Red Date Technology

Red Date Technology Co., Ltd. was founded in September 2014 and is one of the four founding members of the Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN). Headquartered in Hong Kong, Red Date Technology is the technical architect behind the BSN and is responsible for the BSN’s R&D, daily operations, and ma...

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