What Makes Your Data Safe in the Cloud
By moniqueshefer 
Data safety is about more than just security and privacy. It is a multi-pronged issue incorporating some very high profile factors, and a great many less well known and more statistically pertinent concerns – including the risk of data corruption, human error and systems failure.
None the less security remains the most commonly cited concern effecting cloud adoption trends. (Giga Om’s June 2011 Cloud Adoption Trends Report)
Security however is a broad ranging topic that has become a catch all for a large variety of data safety concerns. The question is what are the real dangers to data safety, how aware are cloud storage vendors and customers of these issues and how are they being addressed.
What are the real dangers to Data Safety?
There are many factors that can cause data to be lost, compromised or to become unavailable. Here is a short and no doubt incomplete look at some of those.
Security and Privacy concerns relate to the fear that data will become available to unauthorized people.
The issues encompassed by this include malign attacks on systems. Although these are by far the most talked about type of security breach, in reality there are three other – more common causes.
Intentional misuse of data by employees, data breach as a result of human error and errors by multi-user applications – that cause data to be shown to the wrong user.
Obviously none of these concerns are the sole preserve of cloud infrastructure.
Security and Privacy are significant sources of concern for data safety but there are other issues that are far more prevalent and considerably less publicized that pose a greater risk to your data and your business.
Data corruption in the form of memory errors, disc errors and RAID errors – account for the loss of 1 in every 1500 files. (According to Cern Laboratory’s Data Integrity research April 2007)
This together with the other myriad forms of hardware and systems failure account for 56% of all data loss. (According to Kroll Ontrack, the world’s largest data recovery firm).
Another cause of data loss, is data center loss. Natural and man-made disasters account for a not insubstantial 1-2% of all data loss. (According to Kroll Ontrack)
By far the most overlooked and underestimated cause of data loss is human error, accounting for a huge 26% of lost data.
What can be done about it?
Some basic truths: There will always be untrustworthy people, and opportunities for them to exploit others; There will always be tired, bored or inattentive people, and the resultant human errors that they cause; There will always be unforeseen disasters to cope with, and for the time being at least there will always be disc errors.
So given these irksome realities, what solutions are available.
Scality RING is an example of storage infrastructure that incorporates a variety of characteristics that help to keep your data safe.
- Automatic Replication: RING automatically creates and maintains multiple copies of data, providing fault tolerance. There may still be data loss, but with other copies of the data easily accessible – no harm is done. Automatic replication can also be used instead of RAID – thus avoiding RAID errors also.
- Automation: RING uses automated backups, replication and hardware refresh, thus reducing the potential for human error.
- Self-Healing: RING actively seeks out corrupt data using check sums. When damaged objects are found they can be fixed or recreated from undamaged replicas.
- Geographically distributed: RING support geographically distributed systems, allowing copies of objects to be kept at more than one location, and so protecting against disasters.
- Automatic hardware refresh: Scality’s RING offer non-disruptive hardware refresh. That is to say, a node can be marked for removal, allowing the system to automatically redistribute the data on it, with no need for scheduled down time.
- Data Center Longevity: Scality RING is hardware vendor agnostic – which means that without the usual vendor lock ins, worn out or obsolete hardware can be replaced with up to date technologies.
- Encryption: Scality RING supports a wide range of encryption options.
Data safety includes a great many variables, and it is true that it can never be completely assured – however with the right technology it can be responsibly addressed.
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Really useful post, thanks for sharing.