The Safest Way to Store Data in the Internet

by Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 08/25/2006 | 03:34 AM ]

Internet maybe a common thing nowadays but it is still constantly developing. New opportunities and new technologies are introduced and implemented on the global Web every day. While data storage on the Internet is not something unseen before, Chris Gladwin, a software designer and businessman in <%BANNER[article_nw]%>Chicago, believes he has found the safest and most secure way of storing data yet.

Gladwin developed a set of software routines Cleversafe that would copy the data stored on his PC into a large number of fragments, or slices, reports Cnet News.com. The math1ematics of his solution had an additional benefit: the original data could be reconstructed from a majority of the slices. The design made it possible to retrieve a complete set of his original data even if some of the disks that held portions of the data failed or went offline.

“The current design of such services generally involves making as many as five or more complete copies of the original data and storing them at multiple locations to ensure that information is not lost through a drive failure or other catastrophe. The Cleversafe design will cut the amount of storage space needed for secure backup by more than half,” writes Cnet News.com.

The experimental Cleversafe research grid is located at 11 storage sites around the world, but Gladwin is hoping that a commercial network will evolve, composed of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of storage sites that will be accessible at low cost.

“Today most distributed storage systems work by making multiple copies of data at multiple locations and then using various mechanisms to keep the copies synchronized. Examples include distributed file systems from Microsoft and Google as well as a system designed by software developers at Stanford known as Lockss - Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe - that is used to preserve the digital versions of academic journals. The Cleversafe project uses a different approach based on dispersing data in encrypted slices rather than copying it. That approach shares some design similarities with a Berkeley research project known as OceanStore, which is also intended to create a globally distributed computer storage system,” continues the report.

“They’re not making a commercially implemented solution. Our focus is something that people can use,” Gladwin said of the Berkeley project.

• Cnet News.com: Securing Data by Scattering the Pieces.