Cryptographic Data Splitting? What’s that?

Strategies And Technologies for Cloud Computing Interoperability (SATCCI)

By G C Network | March 4, 2009

As I alluded to in an earlier post, a major cloud computing interoperability event will be held in conjunction with the Object Management Group (OMG) March Technical Meeting on March…

Government Cloud Computing E-zine Launched

By G C Network | March 3, 2009

Today marks the launch of a new electronic magazine dedicated to addressing cloud computing within the government space. Over the last year during my personal exploration of this marketspace, I’ve…

NCOIC Plenary: Cloud Computing Working Group

By G C Network | March 2, 2009

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2nd Government Cloud Computing Survey – A Sneak Peek

By G C Network | February 25, 2009

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Government could save billions with cloud computing

By G C Network | February 23, 2009

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Cloud Games at FOSE 2009

By G C Network | February 19, 2009

ONLINE REGISTRATION NOW AVAILABLE Booz Allen Hamilton is launching its Cloud Computing Wargame (CCW)T at FOSE March 10-12, 2009 in Washington, DC. The CCW is designed to simulate the major…

IBM and Amazon

By G C Network | February 16, 2009

According to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) site, you can now use DB2, Informix, WebSphere sMash, WebSphere Portal Server or Lotus Web Content Management on Amazon’s EC2 cloud. “This relationship…

A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing

By G C Network | February 13, 2009

Yesterday, Berkeley released their View of Cloud Computing with a view that cloud computing provides an elasticity of resources, without paying a premium for large scale, that is unprecedented in…

Cloud Economic Models

By G C Network | February 11, 2009

One of the most important drivers of cloud computing in the Federal space is its perceived “compelling” economic value. Some initial insight on the economic argument is now available on…

Cloud Computing In Government: From Google Apps To Nuclear Warfare

By G C Network | February 10, 2009

Today, I want to thank John Foley of InformationWeek for an enjoyable interview and his excellent post, Cloud Computing In Government: From Google Apps To Nuclear Warfare. Our discussion covered…

Cryptographic data splitting is a new approach to securing information. This process encrypts data and then uses random or deterministic distribution to multiple shares. this distribution can also include fault tolerant bits, key splitting, authentication, integrity, share reassembly, key restoration or decryption.

Most security schema have one or more of the following drawbacks:

  • Log-in and password access often does not provide adequate security.
  • Public-key cryptographic system reliance on the user for security.
  • Private keys stored on a hard drive that are accessible to others or through the Internet.
  • Private keys being stored on a computer system configured with an archiving or backup system that could result in copies of the private key traveling through multiple computer storage devices or other systems
  • Loss or damage to the smartcard or portable computing device in biometric cryptographic systems
  • Possibility of a malicious person stealing a mobile user’s smartcard or portable computing device using it to effectively steal the mobile user’s digital credentials.
  • The computing device connection to the Internet may provide access to the file where the biometric information is stored making it susceptible to compromise through user inattentiveness to security or malicious intruders.
  • Existence of a single physical location towards which to focus an attack.

Cryptographic data splitting has multiple advantages over current, widely used security approaches because:

  • Enhanced security from moving shares of the data to different locations on one or more data depositories or storage devices (different logical, physical or geographical locations
  • Shares of data can be split physically and under the control of different personnel reducing the possibility of compromising the data.
  • A rigorous combination of the steps is used to secure data providing a comprehensive process of maintaining security of sensitive data.
  • Data is encrypted with a secure key and split into one or more shares
  • Lack of a single physical location towards which to focus an attack

Because of these and other advantages, this approach seems to be a natural for cloud computing.

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G C Network

3 Comments

  1. Platypus on December 26, 2008 at 6:35 pm

    New? From the description you give, this sounds a lot like Adi Shamir’s secret sharing from 1979. Maybe you need to be more specific about what the novel part is.



  2. Kevin Jackson on December 26, 2008 at 6:43 pm

    This approach is an advancement to the state-of-the-art. Shamir’s work is referenced in the patent filing. See http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7391865.html



  3. Platypus on December 27, 2008 at 3:38 am

    The thing that matters about a patent is the claims, not the description. Most of the claims don’t even come close to passing the non-obviousness test, as they precisely recapitulate techniques that have been known for over twenty years. Anyone involved with OceanStore, Permabit, Cleversafe, or Allmydata (for example) could show enough prior art to make your head spin. What was the examiner thinking? Maybe this stuff is new to someone, but it’s not new to the industry.