Long-term threats to secure archives

Abstract

Archival storage systems are designed for a write-once, read-maybe usage model which places an emphasis on the long-term preservation of their data contents. In contrast to traditional storage systems in which data lifetimes are measured in months or possibly years, data lifetimes in an archival system are measured in decades. Secure archival storage has the added goal of providing controlled access to its long-term contents. In contrast, public archival systems aim to ensure that their contents are available to anyone.Since secure archival storage systems must store data over much longer periods of time, new threats emerge that affect the security landscape in many novel, subtle ways. These security threats endanger the secrecy, availability and integrity of the archival storage contents. Adequate understanding of these threats is essential to effectively devise new policies and mechanisms to guard against them. We discuss many of these threats in this new context to fill this gap, and show how existing systems meet (or fail to meet) these threats.