THERE IS NO CLOUD: It’s just someone else’s computer

Spoiler alert: Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny also do not exist

Once you come to terms with the fact that the “cloud” is just someone else’s computer, this begs the question as to what type of computer (or collection of computers, ie a network) do you want your data stored on.

Data storage in the cloud is split between private clouds and public clouds or a hybrid of the two. Private clouds offer better security and privacy, however, as deployment and configuration is left to the developer, private clouds have traditionally been defined by large capital investment, high complexity and low usability. With public clouds, data is transferred to and stored at the third-party servers of the service provider, which offers low capital investment, low complexity and high usability, with the rub that the data is less secure and private.

Now, what if you had a public cloud option, which had all of the ease of use benefits of traditional public clouds, plus the default state of the stored data was not only encrypted end-to-end, but also distributed across a widely decentralized network of nodes? Your data would be like a handful of encrypted sand being blown into an expanse of encrypted beach, not stuck in a centralized “fortress” with a big “hack me” sign on it (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/even-hackers-get-hacked-john-quinn?trk=mp-author-card). The resting state of your stored data on the public cloud would be secure: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/545621/why-were-so-vulnerable/.

Now imagine that your data was not only more secure, but that it could be retrieved more quickly using P2P technologies and be more reliable than current public cloud offerings (7 9’s vs 4 9's). Now imagine this vastly superior public cloud offering costing 50% less than traditional public cloud offerings. No, I am not talking about the tooth fairy here, I am talking about Storj.

With Storj, all stored data is highly secure at rest: encrypted end-to-end, sharded into millions of mini files and then widely distributed across thousands of nodes.

It would take a hacker with the powers of Gandalf, Merlin and Dumbledore combined to identify, collect, decode, decrypt, reconstitute and integrity check the data stored on Storj’s network and that sounds like pure fantasy to me.

John Quinn, Co-founder Storj Labs