Balanced Evaluation of Decentralized Encrypted Point-to-Multipoint Storage Systems

Abstract

With an ever-growing avalanche of digital data and threats to cybersecurity, more or less coherent international regulatory frameworks would have put a stop to centralized storage models governing the traditional paradigm. The paper weighs the options for decentralized encrypted point-to-multipoint storage systems against cloud architectures for an alternative, cheaper, and secure solution. All kinds of cryptographic techniques like AES-type schemes together with newly minted concepts of data sharding using an erasure code and blockchain-based verification mechanisms have gone deep into ensuring confidentiality, integrity, and availability for one’s data. The results from our empirical studies that contrast data on decentralized platforms such as IPFS and Storj with AWS S3 indicate that decentralized solutions maintain above 99% data recoverability with acceptable retrieval latencies even when some nodes fail. The legal and ethical implications, especially with respect to data immutability in relation to compliance schemes such as GDPR, are also discussed. Finally, a strategic research roadmap pointing toward quantum-safe encryption, burning adaptive smart contracts, and energy-efficient consensus among all feasible in medical, financial, and IoT areas is delineated.