Sony launches blockchain-based educational infrastructure project

A subsidiary of Sony Corporation announced today that it has started developing blockchain technology for the educational field. Sony Global Education, Inc. is attempting to build a new, widely applicable educational infrastructure, in such a way that damaging or tampering with programs and data is prohibitively difficult.

The new endeavour has begun with technology for sending encrypted data between two specified parties, so academic records can be shared freely and securely over the network, negating the need for a trusted relationship between participants.

“Blockchain shows great promise in revolutionizing services of all kinds.”
— – Sony Global Education

Founded in 1946, Sony Corporation is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. For financial year 2015, Sony Corporation has assets in excess of ¥15.8 trillion but made a loss of approximately ¥125 billion.

Sony operates many diversified businesses including consumer and professional electronics, gaming, entertainment and financial services. In 2015, Forbes ranked Sony as the world’s 79th most valuable brand.

“We consider ourselves as a start-up. I want to bring disruptive innovation through software.”
— – Masaaki Isozu, Sony Global Education President

Sony Global Education was founded in 2014, by Sony Corporation and Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc. (Sony CSL), with a mission “to provide a range of unifying, non-traditional services that inspire a passion for learning across the world.”

Since incorporating, in April 2015, Sony Global Education has integrated two of Sony CSL’s educational research projects; MathNative and Global Math Challenge (GMC).

“Sony Global Education aims to begin developing a new educational infrastructure in 2017, when it will incorporate application programs utilizing its new blockchain-based technology into its own service offerings, starting with the Global Math Challenge.”

• Sony Global Education

Offered online simultaneously in Japanese, English, and Chinese, GMC questions are devised by the Japan Prime Math Olympic Committee, which has been running the premier math contests in Japan for over 20 years, with the support of the Japanese Ministry of Education.

Sony Global Education claims that GMC attracts 150,000 participants in over 80 countries worldwide including the US, Japan, and China. Available for all attendees of any ages online, the third contest starts on March 25.

One key reason for the sheer size of GMC is Sony Global Education’s partnership with the world’s leading global education network, Edmono Inc. The network is used by more than 53 million teachers, students, and parents across 350,000+ schools, in over 190 countries.

However, applying blockchain technology to an education field is not a new idea. In October 2015, Holberton School in San Francisco became the first academic institution to authenticate certificates on the blockchain.

While Sony mentioned several potential uses for applying a blockchain to their education initiative, including a digital permissions platform and another for secure communications, at least one sounds very much like the role Holberton school has already pioneered.

“After taking an examination to demonstrate his or her academic proficiency level, an individual could direct the testing organization to share the test results with one or more third-party evaluating organizations.”

• Sony Global Education

Holberton’s approach to student recordkeeping will be hard for Sony to improve on. When students complete their course there, they receive a digital certificate alongside their traditional, paper copy. The digital copy is then stored on Bitcoin’s immutable blockchain, using Bitproof’s API to write the course data permanently for a few satoshis.

Sony’s approach could be similar. However, they show no sign of  using the bitcoin blockchain. No matter which blockchain Sony Global Education chooses in the future, a positive result may see blockchain technology expanded across Sony Corp.

“Sony Global Education’s new technology can be applied not only in the educational arena, but also in a wider range of industries, from medical care to environmental services to energy.”

• Sony Global Education

Leveraging a blockchain’s properties to share records securely over a network may lead to solutions to data breaches, such as one suffered by Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.

In the fall 2014, the unprecedented cyberattack revealed personally identifiable information of current and former employees of Sony and its subsidiaries, among other data. A lawsuit soon followed, where plaintiffs claimed Sony “did not adequately protect their personal information.”

Sony Pictures Entertainment denies any wrongdoing, but reportedly offered to settle the case out of court for US$8 million. The case is still pending in the central district of California.

While data breaches happen in every industry, the higher education industry accounted for 17 percent of all reported data breaches in 2014, according to a consumer information and consumer advocacy, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.

Privacy Rights Clearinghouse reports that there there were 28 data breaches at educational establishments in 2014. The most severe was a breach at the University of Maryland, where 309,079 student, faculty, and staff records were compromised. There have already been 6 data breaches at educational institutions this year. Among them was the exposure of 140,000 records from the Southern New Hampshire University.

An independent report, conducted by Ponemon Institute and sponsored by IBM, suggests that education data breaches also come second in cost per capita. Average breaches cost about $165, but data breaches in the education industry cost approximately $300, second only to the healthcare industry at $363.