Applications
Financial and legal records, military and government documents,
these are just a few examples of important information that must be
preserved for a long time, but could cause great damage in the
wrong hands. The system we constructed will be useful for the kind
of sensitive information that should be stored or transferred in a
very secure manner, but does not have to be accessed quickly
(within seconds).
Our data storage device has four main applications:
- Secure storage of sensitive data (can’t be hacked digitally
while stored)
- Secure transfer of sensitive data (can’t be hacked
digitally during transfer)
- Archival data storage (high storage density, long lifespan)
- Time capsule to preserve information about our civilization
(dense, durable and DNA-based)
- In addition to the advantages listed above, data stored in
the DNA of spores is also easy to copy, simply by allowing the
spores to germinate and grow.
What is sensitive data?
Data can be classified as sensitive if any of the following
conditions are true:
- Unauthorized disclosure may have serious adverse effects on
the reputation, resources, or services of a business,
institution or individual.
- The data is protected under federal or state regulations.
- There are considerations relating to ethics, privacy or
intellectual property rights.
Some examples of sensitive data that could be stored and
transferred using our system include:
- Patent and prototype information
- Patented or trademarked information such as software source
code developed at a company or university, or a movie script
written by a movie production company
- Genealogical records
-
Medical records, or information that relates to an individual’s:
- Past, present, or future physical or mental condition
- Provision of health care (hospital visit,
appointments with a doctor, therapy)
- Payment for the provision of health care
-
IT security information including configurations,
reports and log data:
- IT security program plans
- Incident information logs
- Access and authentication logs
- Firewall settings
- Login data
Top secret government and military documents
Information relating to public safety and national security
Some types of information about hazardous (radioactive,
toxic, explosive, contagious) substances
Blueprints and building plans of government buildings,
banks, military facilities
Financial records
Information related to investments and investment planning by companies or individuals
Banking account details relating to credit and debit cards:
- Cardholder name, account number, expiration date,
PIN number and verification number
Information related to insurance claims
Information about legal proceedings
Scientific research that is regulated for reasons of
national security, foreign policy or anti-terrorism.
Examples of sensitive scientific research topics include:
- Radioactive, explosive, chemical and biological agents
- Certain cryptography software
- Military electronics
- Satellite information
Although our system is highly versatile, it has two notable
drawbacks when it comes to transfer of confidential data. Synthesis
of DNA carrying the encrypted data is expensive and time-consuming,
and is currently the biggest bottleneck in our process (although
this is bound to change with advances in DNA synthesis
technology). Furthermore, people do not want to share their secret
data with a third party that synthesizes the DNA. Both of these
issues can easily be overcome by having the third party only
synthesize the key, which is far shorter than the encrypted
information. This way, the user sends the secret data via
conventional means, and the key inside spores. This method of
secure data transfer is faster, cheaper and simpler than encoding
all of the data in DNA, but does not benefit from DNA’s incredibly
long shelf-life.
Data Archiving
Data archiving refers to the transfer of data that is not
actively used onto a separate storage medium for long-term storage.
Such data may be important for future reference (old email
messages, scientific data, medical records), or needs to be
preserved to comply with regulations (records of legal proceedings,
phone records). Data archiving is of vital importance to many
organizations, such as IT companies and legal firms, as improper
archiving can result in fines and legal sanctions, not to mention
expensive and time-consuming data discovery searches. Furthermore,
scientific data generated by institutions like CERN must be
preserved for years in order to verify future discoveries.
Although data archiving is often mistaken for making backup
copies of data, there is a notable difference between the two.
Data backups are copies of data which allow the recovery of
information that has been destroyed or corrupted. Data archives, on
the other hand, preserve older data that does not need to be
accessed regularly, in order to reduce the use of the primary form
of data storage.
There are several forms of data archives, each with their own
benefits and disadvantages. Cloud-based data archiving is becoming
more popular as online data transfer speeds increase, while storage
media costs drop. Although cloud storage is initially inexpensive,
it requires ongoing maintenance and consumes far more energy in the
long term than offline data storage. Offline archiving involves
writing the data onto removable media such as magnetic tape.
Tape-based archives do not consume power during storage, and are
therefore a cheaper alternative to cloud storage.
Archives contain records that have been generated as a result of
administrative, commercial, legal or social activities. There are
several types of archives, based on the type of data being
preserved, including:
- Government archives
- Corporate archives
- College and university archives
- Historical archives
- Religious archives
DNA is an incredibly dense and durable storage medium. When
encased in bacterial spores its durability becomes even greater.
For these reasons, in addition to safe storage and transfer of
data, our device is perfectly suited for data archiving.
Time capsule
Collins English Dictionary defines a time capsule as “a
container holding articles, documents, etc, representative of the
current age, … [meant] for discovery in the future”. Essentially,
it is a historic collection of information and items placed in a
durable container and buried underground or interred in the
foundation of a new building.
Time capsules are a way to communicate with civilization of the
future, particularly with future historians and anthropologists
[1]. For this reason, time capsules are typically assembled with
the intention that they will someday be opened. The Crypt of
Civilization, constructed a Oglethorpe University in 1936 is
considered to be the first modern time capsule, and is scheduled to
be opened in the year 8113 [2]. 6,000 years is quite a while, but
the Crypt has been designed to withstand the test of time. However,
the same cannot be said for many other time capsules. Several
preservation issues must be addressed when constructing a time
capsule. Many time capsules are destroyed by groundwater, or simply
lost because their location is forgotten. The choice of media used
to preserve time capsule information is crucial, if it is meant to
be retrieved in the future. Technology advances at a rapid pace,
quickly becoming obsolete, while electronic and magnetic storage
media suffer from deterioration after just a few decades,
illustrating some of the preservation issues that must be taken
into account. For instance, while disk drives capable of reading 5
1⁄4 inch floppy disks were commonly used before the turn of the
21st century, you would be hard pressed to find one today. In this
respect, DNA presents and excellent medium for storage of
information meant for the distant future; as long as there is
intelligent DNA-based life, there will be a reason to study DNA. As
such, technologies for manipulating DNA can be expected to exist in
the future.
A time capsule holding information encoded in DNA can serve as
more than just a message to the future. Given it’s density,
durability and low energy requirements, DNA-based time capsules can
be used to preserve human knowledge for future civilizations or
extraterrestrial visitors, in case of an Extinction Level Event
that wipes out our society. The KEO space time capsule, set to
launch some time in 2017, is meant to carry a compendium of current
human knowledge, and is designed to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere in
50,000 years. Although 50 millennia seems like a long time to us,
it is a blink of an eye from cosmological and evolutionary
perspectives. Information preserved in DNA can potentially last for
millions of years [3], and therefore may someday be discovered by a
completely new humanoid species. The Voyager Golden Records,
launched aboard the Voyager space probes in 1977 are another
example of time capsules in space. These phonograph records contain
115 images and almost 1.5 hours of sounds chosen to portray life on
Earth. These records will never be seen by human eyes again, as
they are over 2.02×1010 km away, and heading away from Earth at a
speed of about 62,100 km per hour. Instead, they are meant for an
extraterrestrial audience. Although expected to last for millions
of years, these records represent a proverbial drop in an ocean of
human knowledge. A DNA-based archive included in such a time
capsule could represent a much more detailed snapshot of our
civilization.
“This is a present from a small, distant world, a token
of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and
our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live
into yours.” - U.S. President Jimmy
Carter
“Launching of this 'bottle' into the cosmic 'ocean'
says something very hopeful about life on this planet."
- Carl Sagan
References
- [1] Eternal Memory: Long-Duration Storage Concepts for Space
66th International Astronautical Congress, Jerusalem, Israel. ©2015
by M Guzman, A Hein and C Welch.
- [2] Crypt
of Civilization Paul Stephen Hudson, Georgia State University
Perimeter College, 04/01/2003
- [3] Isolation of a 250 million-year-old halotolerant bacterium
from a primary salt crystal Nature 407, 897-900 (19 October 2000) |
doi:10.1038/35038060
