U.S. Homeland Security Blockchain Grant Awarded to Factom
- The platform Factom will develop will help organizations to manage certificates and licenses “associated with tracking raw material imports”.
- This grant marks the second investment that the Department of Homeland Security has made into Factom’s technology.
United States Department of Homeland Security building. Wikipedia
Texas-based Factom has won a $197,292 grant to develop a blockchain security system that can detect fraud involving imports, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a press release on 18 November.
The DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) chose to award the grant to Factom, as the blockchain platform it proposed will enable organizations to manage certificates and licenses “associated with tracking raw material imports via an open system” that ensures the provenance of issued credentials.
One more advantage Factom had was that its project was focused on interoperability between blockchains and systems.
S&T’s Silicon Valley Innovation Program (SVIP) Technical Director, Anil John, said:
“Data-centric blockchains that can work with any type of data are useful in enterprise contexts such as those of U.S. Customs and Border Protection for understanding the origin of raw material imports.”
He further added:
“Factom is addressing this business and technical problem in a manner that supports global interoperability by adapting their existing Harmony products to support emerging World Wide Web Consortium global standards such as decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials.”
The Silicon Valley Innovation Program is one of the programs that the S&T uses to fund innovation, and help the private sector to develop and adapt commercial technologies for homeland security use cases.
Companies that participate in the program are eligible for up to $800,000 of non-dilutive funding over four phases. The investment that Factom received is part of Phase 1 of its “Applying Cross-Blockchain Technology to Help Prevent Forgeries or Counterfeiting of Certificates and Licenses” project.
This is the second time that Factom has been awarded a grant from the Department of Homeland Security. In June last year, the company was granted $192,380 to build a system to secure data from the Border Patrol Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
The goal was to make sure that data from border protection devices, such as cameras and motion sensors, was not tampered with.
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