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Company Offers Disaster-Proof Storage For Records
Makarand writes "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting that a Utah company,
Perpetual Storage, is
offering
disaster-proof commercial storage space
deep inside a granite mountain
for companies looking to store their most important records.
The company claims that their vaults are protected
and safe from "any force known to man", including a nuclear blast.
The vaults have gained popularity
recently after hospitals, government agencies and universities have started using them to keep
their computer records safe."
I can store my MP3s and backups of Deus Ex and all of my other favorite-but-discontinued games
Perhaps a nuclear winter would be a good time to re-evaluate our social standings on something other than the size of our bank accounts.
I have been pwned because my
what if the mountain collapses?
take a look at mount10 (http://www.mount10.ch/index-e.html). they offer their "data fortress" for some years now here in switzerland (where every mountain has holes like swiss chees ;).
Like when the sun goes all red giant on us? How about a supernova or getting nailed by a decent sized black hole? What about gravitional collapse of the universe into a primeval atom?
Man knows some pretty awesome and irresistable forces, chief among them, in terms of data persistence, is Rose Mary Woods.
KFG
The company claims that their vaults are protected and safe from "any force known to man", including a nuclear blast.
But not including company employees.
I'm sure after a nuclear blast my first thoughts will go to whether or not my files are safe. Since it'll get boring down in that fallout shelter, so I should read paperwork on now-dead customers and play old video games on my computer. Well, at least until the generator dies.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
"Perpetual Storage -> "Long term storage"
"Disaster-proof" -> "Disaster-resistant"
"any force known to man" -> "most forces known to man, in reasonable amounts and not too close, and assuming no help from a disgruntled member of staff"
Whatever happened to truth in advertising?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Would an electromagnetic pulse-- the kind that nuclear explosions cause-- erase hard drives and thrash digital equipment in the vault?
Just wondering.
My records are always getting melted by the sunshine.
Bitchslapped. Neat.
It's a mountain not a dormant volcano :)
Somehow I don't think the lasting impression I want to leave for future visitors to this planet is Susan from Accounts "Friday Funny".
Out of the area clients can use any available delivery service such as UPS, Fed Ex, or the US Mail.
For when your uber sensitive business data must get to the super secure storage facility safely... trust USPS and remember, pack well.
...can it survive The Most Powerful Force on Earth ??
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Also, while the mountain may protect your stuff from any kind of physical catastrophe like meteors or mad bombers, it will do nothing to protect it from frothing lawyers and government agents (SCO, RIAA, BATF or whatever) or plain old industrial spies with briefcases full of cash, seeking access to the stuff from the people who run the facility. The perils of putting your goodies in someone else's care in a publicly known location are the same as those of storing your backups on someone else's computer over the net (and the obviousness of that peril is one reason why the net-backup business didn't do so well).
If you want to keep something really safe, protect it well and don't tell anyone where it is. Also, if all you're trying to protect is data, rather than physical artifacts, you're better off replicating it all over the place than trying to bomb-proof it at a single site.
In all seriousness, though they seem to have an open mind regarding material allowed to be stored, they substantially limit their potential market. For instance, "To eliminate fire risk, the company won't store paper or anything that might burn." I suppose this makes sense. But then they start turning down precious metals (and by that logic, stones such as diamonds and valuable jewelry), refusing to store cryogenically frozen human cells.
Additionally, I have to wonder about the security of the place. It only has about ten employees, which would put suspects on a short list, but at the same time gives the mountain comparatively little protection from outside attackers. Furthermore, the excavation was done only thirty or so years ago, so it hasn't yet stood the test of time. Not long ago, they completed some more major construction adding second and third floor mezanines...I have to wonder as to whether or not any of this has affected the structural integrity and to what extent. Of course, the southwest isn't exactly the most stable region either...earthquakes are many.
But let's put all of that aside for a moment. We have a company that has its eyes on the future!
Merry Christmas,
Scott
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They have several vault sites where they keep the works of Elron Hubbard preserved. Quite elaborate and expensive. Seems redundant, you can find all the used copies of Dianetics and Battlefield Earth you could ever want at 2nd hand books stores.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
All organizations managing critial data has a need for a robust and reliable IT practice - nothing is more important than medical records. But storing data in granite valuts doesn't mean much if you don't know what the quality of your data, and it doesn't help you if you need to recover data in near real time.
Many CIOs in the IT industry simply don't understand the need or purpose of IT. That's why some organizations have CIOs find it acceptable to "rarely lose records", or to have "occational network outage".
Long term storage can't help organizations that simply don't have a good IT practice.
I think a great example is Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. This often-told story of a four day network outage at a large hospital has been passed off as a problem caused by a lone researcher and a poorly programmed router.
Nobody looks at the bigger picture - what are the REAL potential issues with this IT system? Was there something on the magnitude of a nuclear blast taking away the hospital's IT infrastructure? Or were there simple, systemic problems within IT that were not properly addressed by the CIO and upper management? In almost every case, it is the later.
It all comes down to high level responsibilities. Most IT directors feel they are not responsible - they don't know how to see the issues with the "big picture". The "big picture" they can see is a nuclear blast! It's almost laughable.
Some CIOs would rather blame a lowly worker or the vendor of a piece of equipment instead of blaming the problem on a serious-but-mundane issue within the IT organization they are responsible for.
No wonder why IT in the USA is in such a bad state.
It's safe from any force known to man, yet here we go, slashdotting their server, making quick on-line retrieval of even the tiniest record impossible.
You could aways encode messages in your DNA.
Or even more sophisticated: you could encode your DNA in such a way that the message shows up as a tatoo on the buttoms of your descendants.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
They need to update their physics textbook. Modern forces at work include Bureaucracy, Incompetence and Government.
I'll bet any one of those three could breach this fortress ...
... mostly company business records on computer tapes and microfilm.
See Pedler, K. & Davis, G.
The Viking Press, New York, 1972;
Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters
Or some nanobots wreaking havoc for the more hardware type of things.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Am I the only one who thinks if we fall victim to nuclear blasts are car insurance records are the least of our worries?
Good ol' Americans. Always thinking with their greed, er lust for power, er... American dream...
one of us. one of us. one of us.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
...I have a feeling I'll be reading about this in "The Doghouse" section of Crypto-Gram sometime soon.
I think Schneier makes a special point in Beyond Fear that extreme terms like "absolute security" and "any force known to man" don't even make sense in a security situation. They are only used by people who don't understand security in the first place!
I wonder of solid granite is strong enough to protect against social engineering...
I keep all my vital info woven into posts, and hidden right here, its the only place I know that won't get ./'ed.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
Most people here are missing the point. These things were orinially built to house the geneology data for the LDS church to survive serious biblical type disasters. This is for like, the end of the world comes and were diggin out, and your data is still there.
I can't believe some of the idiots responding to this saying "this is useless because it doesn't allow restore in near-real-time".
At the other end of the sepctrum is the idiot who is worried about volcanoes in Little Cottonwood Canyon. Please people, get a clue before posting.
This place is using old missle silo's for data storage. I just think it was an interesting use. A swords to plowshares kinda thing.
If the data was that important, I don't think I could trust anyone to hold on to it for me. For important things, I'd keep them in underwear, where no one would dare take it from. Emails, contact information, etc. No wait. The most important thing already IS in my underwear. =D
Arrgh, armchair geologists getting modded Insightful.
Granite forms at depth in the crust, not in volcanos. It is typically indicative of igneous activity a long time ago -- sometimes billions of years. Its presence is not any kind of indicator of potential for volcanic activity.
When it is exposed at the surface, it usually indicates there has been tectonic activity that moved it upwards. Again, may have happened a long time ago.
In the Salt Lake, there is extremely low potential for volccanic or other igneous activity. What Utah DOES have is a potential for strong seismic (earthquake) acitvity. How safe things are getting bounced around by a magnitude 7 is a matter of question. Would depend on how well engineered the structure is to isolate it from ground movement. Building structures on solid rock is more easily engineered that unconsolidated materials because there is no potential for liquifaction and the high-amplitude, low frequency surface waves (Lova, Rayleigh) are not much of a design factor.
Building inside a granite mountain is a pretty good choice for isolating a structure from seismic waves. Just requires a good isolation system.
When testing, you should always mount a scratch mountain!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Naturally, this has been a great problem for my anscestors, with looters and archaeogists plundering our graves. First, we tried similar a similar long-term storage system in a huge man made stone polyhedron, but this was too conspicuous and attracted robbers. Then, we tried vaults hidden in a valley, but the robbers scoured the entire area, destroying the afterlife hopes for countless of my ancestors.
Maybe this system, at the center of a real mountain, perpetually guarded by corporate rent-a-cops, will finally ensure the endless afterlife that we strive for. I'm going to have them send me a brochure.
Perhaps we should pause for just one second in our technological discussions of permanent storage of data and ask the more important question of WHY it is necessary to store data permanently.
Permanent data storage means inability to correct the mistakes that are part of the storage record. With the epidemic of identity theft currently out of control, and the lack of standards concerning who collects data, what type of data, and its ultimate use, it is foolish and dangerous to permanently store what is often wrong and low quality data.
Nor should we forget that ultimately all data is collected for political or commercial reasons, and in the West, these are often the same things. Permanent data storage is one of the foundations of permanent institutional political structures, which is just another name for fascism.
Ever had a computer glitch destroy your credit? Are you a one of the millions of John Smith, Jin Kim, Jean Martin, Abdul Mohammad, or other people who share a common name with tens of thousands of other people? Suppose you're Juan Lopez and some twit in the Migra transposed a couple of numbers on immigration form twenty years ago and now every time you cross the US border some fuckwit demands to stick something up your ass for 'National Security'.
And nobody or no amount of money can ever change it because the records are permanently and unalterably stored in a nuclear bomb proof mountain somewhere?
As a system administrator I pay an arm and a leg to put my data inside a granite canyon so it can withstand any force known to man.
Then a big disaster happens and me and everyone in my company dies.
At that point our disaster recovery options are as follows:
1) an alien life form to arrive on earth, rescue the data from the inside of a granite canyon, and decide to stay and run our business
2) a primitive life form on earth that was strong enough to withstand the big natural disaster, evolves over millions of years, then rescues the data from the inside of the granite canyon and decides to run our business
Neither scenario seems likely. But to keep the CEO happy we should probably use those good quality HP LTO tapes to make sure the data is still around in a few million years.