Re: [PLUG] Sensitive Personal Information In the Cloud? Why bother?

[Art Clemons <artclemons@aol.com>]

On 03/10/2014 01:54 PM, Casey Bralla wrote:
> If' you're looking for data security and redundancy, then burn it to a couple
> of DVDs or USB disks and give one to your mother and put another in your
> safety deposit box.  You lose a little immediacy of access, unless you keep
> yet another copy on your local drives.
>
> If the chance of failure of a single disk is 1 in 1 million, then the chance
> of two disks failing is 1 is 1 trillion (if I counted my zeros correctly).
> Add a third disk in a physically remote location, and the probably of losing
> the data drops to ~zero.


Actually neither flash nor DVDs/CDs are really suitable for long term 
archiving.  The estimates on life by manufacturers of said items seem to 
not be reflected in actual results.  I refer you to the following url

<http://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/initiatives/temp-opmedia-faq.html>

have DVDs I used for backup six or seven years ago, if I didn't have 
later backups, I'ld be in trouble because I get read errors on most of 
them.  I've faced similar issues with tape, hard drives and the like. 
In fact the best advice I can give is to regularly copy your backups for 
safety.  That being said, right now, we have no idea how long cloud 
storage will last or what factors might affect the security of things 
encrypted and then stored in the cloud.  The encryption method we use 
today may be proved vulnerable a month, two months or years from today. 
 That is the other risk with cloud storage besides it going away and 
that is we have no idea of how many others besides authorized folk 
actually have access to files.  Consider let's say the Australian 
government figuring out to defeat the RSA algorithm and searching 
through your files, then consider what private entities could do with 
the same files and algorithms.



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