Harassed by a specialist blade runner, trying to storm the center Tyrell Corporation headquarters to learn how long they have to live, six Nexus 6 “replicants” save treasured photos that tell them about earlier events they believe occurred to them but cannot remember now. Those planted and enforced memories were “a cushion or pillow for their emotions” that made them humans. This is the magnificent Ridley Scott’s film titled Blade Runner, and it describes quite well what memories are for us.
Nowadays all our pictures, videos, letters, and documents are no longer physical objects but digital files stored in devices such as hard disks, smartphones, tablets, digital camera memory chips, pen drives, external USB drives and DVDs.
Image: Bladerunner by Ian Mutto
Those individual objects can be stolen, lost, destroyed, or simply broken, and their content with your data will be irreversibly lost. Some cautious users backup from time to time, but same copy is not always well made or as often as necessary, so the risk is mitigated but not always diminished as much as we wish or need.
Protecting data against technology evolution
Over time, computer media, communication protocols, storage formats, and operating systems change, evolve, and get lost in the collective past. Nobody younger than thirty years old remembers today what 8’ or 5’ ¼ floppy disks were. Most of the current computer users do not even remember the shape and details of the double-sided, double density 2HD diskettes with their enormous 740 kB capacity for those days. The last floppy disks were discontinued in 2003. Today, the youngest users do not even know what a CD was. All files, all the information stored on those media would be very difficult to restore today.
Certainly, global computerization brings significant benefits to our society and our private lives; however, we should bear in mind the challenges currently posed by computer security, and the IT risks associated with these emerging technologies. And we should not forget the attacks our information systems can suffer and the deep impact they can have on our lives.
We must find the way to protect our data digital memories of past times from technology evolution or any kind of accidents.
In many societies, not having historical records is the same as lacking identity. For example, without having a credit record, you will not be taken into consideration in the USA. You will be transparent for its society and, incidentally, a common suspect if something goes wrong.
Our entire society needs to ensure and secure that our memories and documents, as well as our individual and collective histories are safe and protected. We should leave in experts hands the task of ensuring that, whatever happens, we will be always able to recover the remains of what we were, and also the remains of the events. Storage technologies in the cloud are precisely responsible for that function.
Cloud storage: the easiest solution
Disquettes. Image by Andreshiro
Cloud storage providers are responsible for protecting with technical and procedural measures our files against the lapse of time, technological obsolescence, or any incidental or intentional accident.
The problem of leaving someone to save our data and memories is that we must share; in other words, we must trust them. Remember that what Internet knows about you will probably never be forgotten.
Citizens, businesses, hospitals, schools and universities, even the government and all its agencies, need to be able to enjoy the security that cloud storage technologies provide. However, they should not and must not sacrifice the confidentiality and integrity of their information.
In SMiD Cloud we have developed the final solution to this Security versus Privacy dilemma. With our SMiD device, any user, whether big or small, can use any storage media, public or private, to safely store his/her digital files.
To prevent “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain”, you can now use any public cloud to make your files eternal (at least as long you pay the fee), and thanks to your SMiD device, you still maintain your privacy and know that no one has changed one single bit of your memories.
Jorge Dávila
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidentiality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_integrity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tears_in_rain_monologue
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2905953.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Deckard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicant