Cleversafe information dispersal involves creating multiple "slices" of data and distributing them to storage nodes in multiple data centers, explained Julie Bellanca, director of marketing for Cleversafe. Even if someone gained unauthorized access to any of the storage nodes, the slices would be unrecognizable as data, she said. The technology uses unique mathematical algorithms that encrypt each slice and only when the slices are recombined is the data again recognizable.
Cleversafe's information dispersal also increases the chances of recovering data that is lost or corrupted. Bellanca analogized the algorithms to multiple mathematical formulas one might encounter in a high school math class. If you have 16 equations with 10 unknowns among them, as long as you have 10 of those equations, then you can identify the 10 variables to get the solution. By comparison, if you have data stored in 16 slices in various locations, if some data centers go down and you can only retrieve 10 slices, you still have your data. "Because we fundamentally transform the data into equations that can help you recreate the data, if there's a hardware breach, there's no data loss exposure," she said.
Bellanca claims information dispersal is also more effective and efficient than the widely used redundant array of independent disks (RAID) storage technology because in an era of 2 terabyte (TB) disk drives and petabyte-size storage systems, "RAID is not going to cut it."
Villars concurs: "RAID is a very limited form of data dispersal. It happens to be limited to disks in a single system and isn't particularly flexible."
Cleversafe did not reveal the amount of the financial investment it received from In-Q-Tel.
