Dispersed Storage Network Data Encryption and Segmentation
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Current distributed storage and task processing systems face challenges in efficiently managing and processing large volumes of data across multiple devices, particularly in ensuring data integrity and security, and in effectively executing complex tasks in a distributed manner.
Innovation Solution
A distributed computing system that utilizes dispersed error encoding and decoding to store and process data across multiple geographically dispersed units, enabling secure, reliable, and scalable data storage and task execution by segmenting data into encoded slices and distributing them across multiple execution units, with error correction mechanisms to ensure data integrity and security.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If data is stored in a dispersed storage network across multiple devices, then data reliability and security are improved, but system complexity and difficulty of managing data integrity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments data into multiple slices and disperses them across different storage devices in the network. Each slice is independently stored, and the system uses error correction encoding to reconstruct the original data from any sufficient subset of slices, thereby improving reliability while managing complexity through modular data structure
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces error correction encoding as an intermediary layer between the data and storage devices. This encoding mechanism automatically handles data integrity verification and reconstruction, reducing the complexity of manual data management while enhancing reliability through automated error correction
2Reliability
If data is encrypted before storage in dispersed storage network, then data security is improved, but processing efficiency and task execution speed deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies encryption as a preliminary action before data is dispersed and stored in the network. By pre-encrypting the data, the system ensures security is established upfront, allowing subsequent processing and task execution to operate on encrypted data without requiring additional decryption steps, thus maintaining processing efficiency
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements selective encryption where different portions of data may be encrypted with different keys or methods based on their sensitivity and access requirements. This allows critical data to be heavily protected while less sensitive data can be processed more efficiently, balancing security and productivity locally across different data segments
3Power
If complex tasks are distributed across multiple execution units, then processing capability is improved, but coordination overhead and task management complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments complex tasks into smaller sub-tasks that can be independently executed by different processing units in the dispersed storage network. Each processing unit handles its assigned sub-task locally, and results are aggregated to form the final output, thereby increasing overall processing capability while managing complexity through task decomposition
Solution Approach 2:
The patent designs processing units with universal capabilities that can execute various types of tasks and operations. This multi-functionality allows the same hardware infrastructure to handle diverse computational workloads, reducing the need for specialized coordination mechanisms and simplifying task management across the distributed system
Data Source
AI summary
A method begins by a dispersed storage (DS) processing module dividing data into a plurality of data segments, encoding a data segment using a dispersed storage error encoding function to produce a set of encoded data slices, and generating slice names for each encoded data slice to produce a plurality of slice names. When a subset of encoded data slices of the set of encoded data slices is to be encrypted, the method continues with the DS processing module generating a master key, selecting a portion of the slice names for the subset of encoded data slices to produce a subset of selected slice name portions, generating a subset of encryption keys, encrypting the subset of encoded data slices using the subset of encryption keys to produce a subset of encrypted encoded data slices, and outputting the subset of encrypted encoded data slices to a dispersed storage network (DSN).