Re: [tlug] secure document storage

[Nicolas Limare <nicolas+tlug@example.com>]

> Any other suggestion for data that can't be lost.  I have a safety
> deposit box at a local bank, and an encrypted disk I'd carry.
> However, in a serious earthquake neither of those might be accessible
> to me.
> 
> I'm not sure I could trust your average online document storage
> service.

You can not trust one, but I think you can trust the redundancy.

If I were you, I would rent different online storage spaces, one in
Japan and one overseas. You can get virtual servers from 16$ at
Gandi[1] and 20$ at Linode[2], and I'm sure you can have plenty of
other providers.

Then periodically rsync[3] your important data there. Automatically of
course. You won't loose your data unless 2 datacenters on 2 different
continents are damaged. If you still don't feel safe, opt for more
redundancy and 3 of 4 different backup locations, handled by different
companies.

You can also add a versioning layer with rsnapshot[4] (remotely, on each
backup location) to keep an history of the backuped data and protect
yourself against human errors (rm -rf && rsync... ooops, deleted the
data and the backup!)

And if your data must be strongly protected against curious eyes, you
can encrypt it locally, before rsync. ecryptfs[5] would probably be a
good solution to transparently encrypt the files: you use the
(decrypted) files in the mounted file system, but you rsync the
(encrypted, portable) files un the file system backend. But be sure to
save the key somewhere in case you can't remember or are unable to
perform the recovery yourself. Secret sharing tools, like Shamir's
Secret Sharing Scheme[5] can be a solution: distribute fragments of
the key to 5 distant persons you trust, such that if 3 of them
cooperate they can reconstruct your key.

[1]http://www.gandi.net/hosting/vps
[2]http://www.linode.com/
[3]http://rsync.samba.org/
[4]http://rsnapshot.org/
[5]https://launchpad.net/ecryptfs
[6]http://point-at-infinity.org/ssss/

-- 
Nicolas LIMARE
http://nicolas.limare.net/                         pgp:0xFA423F4F

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: Digital signature