Caringo

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Q: Can CAStor be used for more than archiving solutions?

A: Compare it to a restaurant coat check operation. A diner wants to check (store) his or her coat, so the coat check office takes it and issues a ticket. To get it back, the diner hands over the ticket and receives the coat. You don't know (or care) what's on the ticket, where they put your coat or what they have to go through to get it back.

CAS also issues a 'ticket' when asked to store information. A great deal of the power of CAS is the fact that this ticket is location transparent. That is, there are no file hierarchies or folder names or disk locations associated with the stored content. If the data is moved at some point in time, the ticket never changes. This ticket is created by attaching a unique fingerprint or tag onto the information to be stored. Many current CAS systems run hashing algorithms like MD-5 over the content to be stored in order to create this tag; this may add a significant degree of latency to CAS performance. But when the same tag is used for guaranteeing information integrity, a real problem arises. Hashing algorithms get "broken" over time, due to ever-increasing computer power.

Caringo's patent-pending solution splits the identifying and guaranteeing functions. A unique identifier is assigned to a given piece of content. A separate hash is used to guarantee content integrity. Both are uniquely and irreversibly linked in an auditable data structure as part of the Content Integrity Seal option of CAStor, referred to as a Hash Authority. The big step forward is that over time the hash function can be "upgraded" i.e., replaced by a stronger function, without the integrity of the information ever being at stake.

This process is entirely transparent to the applications using CAStor as well as all their stored data. While already invaluable for medium-term secure storage applications in the compliance and regulatory spaces, it does additionally open a realistic perspective on very long term digital storage and conservation with absolute integrity guarantees.

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