Re: Has anyone looked at digital archiving?

[Alan Amesbury <amesbury () OITSEC UMN EDU>]

James H Moore wrote:

> A very talented systems administrator with very good security knowledge,
> named Chris asked me a question about digital archiving, and after a
> conversation, we had more questions than answers.
[snip]
> Then we talk about media.  The temptation is to put it on CDRs or
> writable DVDs and store them well.  I ask about 8 inch floppies.  That
> technology isn't 40 years old, but I don't have anything to read them
> with.  Will the same happen to CDs and DVDs in 40 years?  People used to
> go through mag tape refreshes every few years. But as you sum up the
> archiving disks that you might burn, year upon year, after a number of
> years, just converting and retiring media could become a fulltime job.
>
>
>
> Then we realize that we are talking about things like Word 2003 and
> Adobe 7.  What will Word 2046 look like?  Will it read Word 2003
> documents?  Will Internet Explorer 23 still be patched with almost every
> Microsoft patch cycle?  Oops, got off of the subject.  You get the
> picture.  Word 2003 seems to go back to Word 95.  But even then you get
> messages like "Formatting may be lost" when it wants to convert on
> opening.  And it doesn't say anything about Word 6, the predecessor to
> Word 95.  So where does integrity and availability go in archiving for
> 40 years?
>
>
>
> Has anyone looked at this type of issue from a practical standpoint?
> Any solutions?

At the "CISO Q&A with Dark Tangent" at DEFCON last year, someone asked
pretty much the same question.  Merck's CISO was one of the panelists.
She said that Merck, like any pharmaceutical company, has to follow
stringent protocols regarding the storage and archiving of data relating
to a number of aspects of their business.  While their archival needs
are a bit longer (I think 100+ years was the number used), the idea is
the same.

They considered DVDs, CD-Rs, magtape, etc., among many storage formats.
 After much analysis, they settled on microfiche stored in old salt
mines as their long-term storage method.  Nothing else was reliable enough.

I've NO idea how they search it, but presumably they have a really good
index.  :-\


--
Alan Amesbury
University of Minnesota