Tech giant Microsoft has announced its collaboration with blockchain technology company Tierion on a service that links data to the blockchain to prove the data’s integrity and existence.

The companies will be collaborating on a service that generates, manages, and validates attestations, which can be verified without relying on a trusted authority, and will explore how blockchain technology serves the needs of developers and organizations.

Tierion will be working with Microsoft’s decentralized identity initiative that aims to give people and organizations control of their identity and related data. The role of Tierion will lie in linking data to the blockchain and in generating a timestamp proof of the data’s integrity and existence.

“Working with Microsoft helps us further our goal of building a global proof engine. For many use cases, it’s better to link your existing systems to the blockchain instead of building your own blockchain. We were thrilled when Microsoft approached us about working together,” Wayne Vaughan, CEO of Tierion, said.

Although public blockchains like bitcoin are exceptionally secure, they are slow. Tierion will solve this scalability by cryptographically linking numerous data points to a single transaction. Microsoft will be working with the blockchain company on a service that leverages the open source Chainpoint protocol that has been developed by Tierion team or using the blockchain as a trust anchor, the release stated.

"Tierion is a leader in anchoring data to blockchains,” Daniel Buchner, Microsoft’s Head of Decentralized Identity, said. “We’re excited to collaborate with them to advance our decentralized identity initiative. There is great potential to help organizations improve security and reduce compliance costs.”

The partnership between Microsoft and Tierion marks an important step in bringing the best blockchain-based tools and services to the developers.