Making sure that your data is safe can be a tricky issue. If you leave it on your hard disk, anybody who steals your computer or hacks into it will gain access to it. If you keep it on the cloud, anybody who hacks the service or obtains your login details can have access to it. How would you solve a problem like this?
Well, some researchers have come up with a new way to protect your data with a system called “Cloud Shredder”. Users place their files that they want to protect inside a folder. Cloud Shredder then splits the files into two and uploads the one half into the cloud. Now whenever you want to access that secure file on your computer, you have to make sure that you’re connected to the internet to obtain the other half from the cloud – without both halves, the data would be unusable.
So this means that in the event of a stolen computer all you need to do is delete the cloud portion of the data and the thief will be left with a hard drive full of junk that they can’t open. However, the drawback to this system means that users need to be online at all times if they want to access their “shredded” data. Another drawback is that if you happen to lose or accidentally delete one half of the data by yourself – there’s no way for you to get it back.
Cloud Shredder will work with only Adobe Acrobat and Open Office when it is first announced later this month, but you can expect support for other apps in the future (I suppose that would depend on how successful it becomes). What do you think of “Cloud Shredder”? Do you think it has the potential to become the next big thing in data security?
Filed in . Read more about Backup, Cloud, Data and Security.