Will This be the End of The Cloud?
Our lives revolve around technology for nearly everything. From waking us up in the morning, to tracking and completing daily tasks, to growing a business. Now, more than ever, technology has also created a possibility to automate just about everything for us. Whether good or bad, we have all fallen into being addicted to the great advantages our devices provide.. But with all the good came a sacrifice that no one had fully anticipated. Inadequate protection over our privacy.
Near the end of 2019, Facebook was facing a $550 million lawsuit for collecting data, without permission, of users’ faces from devices featuring facial recognition. Wednesday, January 29, 2020, Facebook agreed to pay. This was noted as the “largest cash settlement ever resolving a privacy related lawsuit.” With every news and media network broadcasting this event, the general population began publicly questioning what other potential lies we’ve been told about how safe our data truly is.
The main question is whether or not we can truthfully rely on our current data storage systems in ‘The Cloud’ to keep our personal information safe and secure from any form of data breach. Good news is… the technology for a fully-transparent and decentralized system has been in use for years now, just not in the use for public data storage. This may very well be the end of Cloud services, and the future of Blockchain Technology.
Infrastructure: The Cloud vs. Blockchain
“Cloud storage systems are designed to give the user control of data as it stored in a remote location and maintained by a cloud service provider.”
The infrastructure within Blockchain differ significantly than the current leading services utilizing cloud. The cloud functions by distributing data into one centralized server. This leaves a large potential for any specific location with a data center to be hacked and stripped of individuals’ data. Blockchain operates very differently, breaking down the data into tiny individual pieces, distributing them across a variety of servers, then piecing it all back together once one wishes to access it by possession of its’ key. In the case of intellectual data, that would be you. The end result, is a MUCH safer, more secured form of collecting and housing data.
The speed at which this notion of security is headed is, well… fast. Far faster than cloud adaptation ever was, and is being implemented and tested by many big tech companies, including Google. While the cloud is valued as a trillion-dollar industry in today’s world, tech-enthusiasts see Blockchain becoming the next generation “Cloud 2.0”, and completely wiping out the cloud system all together. Very similar to how cloud replaced the individual hard drives we all remember, but hardly miss, in the past.
The Push Toward Our Future
Few issues still remain that inhibits large-scale companies to fully adopt Blockchain in today’s market. File size and cost are primarily the issues being worked on, but with the massive potential this service can have all of our data security, there’s no question that companies, like Arweave, will develop a solution. We believe the year 2020 will be a very strong year for Blockchain capabilities. For any tech-company that’s NOT using, or even considering this technology to store their users’ data, will likely fall far behind those looking toward the future and creating the reality we all deserve.