Shifting to decentralised storage for derisking data and enhancing security

Decentralised storage infra is easy to install, move and manage, and it doesn't require the heavy investments of data centres. It reduces risks of outage and cyberattacks

Data without a storage facility is like trying to keep food fresh without a refrigerator. The amount of data created, captured, copied and consumed globally crossed 149 zettabytes last year and is increasing rapidly. In the next five years, data creation is projected to grow to more than 394 zettabytes, according to Statista. (A zettabyte is equivalent to  a billion terabytes.)

Storing data efficiently requires a new approach and formats as otherwise traditional methods will be overwhelmed.  Organisations like the Filecoin Foundation are leading efforts for decentralised data storage. Filecoin has the world’s largest decentralised storage network, where more than 100 individual organisations keep their data or are working to do so. 

“Decentralised storage is becoming increasingly relevant as organisations recognise the risks and inefficiencies of traditional Cloud storage models. Data is stored across a global network of independent providers, reducing risks associated with downtime or attacks,” said Porter Stowell, strategic advisor at Filecoin. 

“Filecoin's proof-of-storage mechanisms enable organisations to verify data integrity without relying on central gatekeepers, promoting transparency,” said Stowell, who is also the chief executive officer of W3.IO, an industry consortium that promotes Web3, a term used to describe the next iteration of the internet. 

Experts believe that a decentralised storage infrastructure is easy to install, move and manage for local use and it doesn't require the heavy investments of data centres. According to Stowell, centralised storage depends on large data centres and this creates vulnerabilities like outages or cyberattacks.  

Another issue is control and transparency: Users have little visibility on how and where data is stored or managed. Filecoin has added to its network datasets from cultural and scientific organisations like the Smithsonian Institution, Flickr Foundation, Internet Archive, MIT Open Learning and Starling Lab. More than 500,000 “culturally significant” digital artefacts are stored on the network. The Internet Archive is a non-profit that has built a library that includes 835 billion web pages, 44 million books and text, 15 million audio recordings (including 255,000 live concerts), 10.6 million videos (including 2.6 million television news programmes and 4.8 million images. The Archive will lean on decentralised storage for saving data. The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History is working to upload nearly 300 digitised sound recordings on Filecoin’s network. 

The Flickr Foundation is contributing the thousand most-viewed pictures from Flickr Commons, a 17-year-old programme to make photography collections of cultural institutions accessible to the public. Launched in 2008 in partnership with the United States’ Library of Congress, Commons includes more than two million images from 120 cultural institutions around the world. A key advantage of a decentralised global network is that information remains accessible even if parts of it go offline. As protection against cyberattacks, a decentralised network allows significant de-risking for global entities and enterprises. 

Decentralised storage helps in training artificial intelligence models: A task that requires access to vast datasets. It enables efficient, secure and cost-effective sharing of high-value datasets across organisations. The decentralised science movement promotes open-access initiatives to ensure that research datasets are publicly available for collaboration and innovation. Secure data sharing between supply chain partners enhances transparency and efficiency. 

The Filecoin Foundation says its strategy in India focuses on encouraging enterprises, data centres, and Web3 entrepreneurs to join its network as storage providers. The foundation will provide grants and organise hackathons (collaborative computer programming) and developer programs for the Web3 ecosystem.