Threats, Defenses and Economics in Digital Preservation - Abstract
Preserved digital content is subject to a
broad range of threats, from bit rot, through obsolescence of hardware,
software and formats, to external attack, insider abuse and government
supression. Probably the most immediate threat to most preservation
systems is economic failure. Designers of preservation systems need to
be explicit about the threats
they are addressing, how they are addressing
these threats, and the effect on system costs.
The talk will review the threat model
developed for the LOCKSS (Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) system, the
defenses it uses, and the economic rationale behind them. Building on
this experience, the talk will also cover some of the scaling problems
that can be expected as we try to preserve larger, petabyte-scale
databases such as those one which e-science is increasingly
based.