Cloud Shredder protects your data by ripping it up

Jacob Aron, technology reporter

(Image: Sninichi Eguchi/amana/Getty)

A misplaced laptop filled with confidential data is a classic data security breach, with the potential to cause huge embarrassment and financial loss. Encryption is one way to protect your data, but given enough time and ingenuity there is always the risk that a laptop thief could decrypt your drive. An alternative is to store all of your files on a remote server using something like Dropbox, but that means trusting your cloud service provider to not take a peek at your data.

Now, researchers have come up with a third option that offers the best of both worlds. Their system, dubbed "Cloud Shredder", splits files into two pieces that must be combined before use. Files are invisibly split when placed in a Dropbox-style folder, with one part stored on your local hard drive, while the other is sent to the cloud. If your laptop is stolen, you simply delete the cloud part of your data and the thief is left with a hard drive full of junk.

One problem with the system is that users must always be online in order to access their files, but Nan Zhang, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences who helped develop Cloud Shredder, says this won't be an issue for long as mobile internet becomes ubiquitous.

Cloud Shredder currently works with Adobe Acrobat Reader and Open Office but Zhang says it could be easily be extended for use with other document software. He will present the system at the Frontier of Computer Science and Technology conference in Changsha, China later this month.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/19bce010/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Conepercent0C20A110C110Ccloud0Eshredder0Eprotects0Eyour0Ed0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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