Seagate Technology and IBM have teamed up to use blockchain technology to reduce the counterfeiting of hard disk drives.

Blockchain is the transparent and secure decentralized ledger behind Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, but its usefulness extends to a lot of other parts of tech, and the two companies will use it to uniquely identify hard drives — and perhaps other products — to prevent counterfeiting. IBM blockchain leader Jerry Cuomo recently told me that Big Blue has 1,500 blockchain specialists.