Distributed storage: Key to security? - News - Business

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Distributed storage: Key to security?

By James Pearce, ZDNet Australia
March 07, 2003
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/business/soa/Distributed-storage-Key-to-security-/0,139023166,120272697,00.htm

Researchers at the CSIRO are working on a virtual storage technology, designed to improve the security of private documents.

Paul Greenfield of the CSIRO mathematical and information sciences division told ZDNet Australia that the technology could eventually be used as protection against malicious hackers.

Termed "Secure Distributed Storage", the technology involves breaking data files into encrypted, erasure-resistant fragments that are replicated and stored randomly across a global network of data storage servers.

"It keeps information out on the network somewhere without knowing exactly where it is, or what you're holding on behalf of other people," Greenfield said. This makes the data more tamper proof, either from the people running the servers or from malicious hackers, according to Greenfield.

"If someone hacks into a particular server they can't find your personal information," said Greenfield, because the server does not hold all the information in a particular file, and the distribution of fragments of a file is randomised.

"The randomisation makes it more secure," said Greenfield. "You don't know if two objects are related, or even encrypted with the same key." The client always has the information required to find the fragments on the network, he added.

There are numerous ways to randomise the distribution, according to Greenfield. One form that the team at the CSIRO are working towards is a system that distributes the fragments through a randomisation equation. To retrieve the information you require the key that allows you to perform the computation in order to locate all the pieces of your data.

Another technique would use 'IP Multicasting', where each fragment has a unique tag. When a request for fragments is put out the server hosting it responds.

Greenfield said that the first application of the technology, scheduled to be ready for commercialisation in a couple of years, would be to allow companies that are normally fierce competitors to collaborate on a project. The system reduces the danger of accidentally providing a competitor with access to information they shouldn't have, and removes tensions over who has control of shared information on their server, Greenfield said.