Secure Archive Storage for All of Your Digital Assets

What is secure archive storage? 

Secure archive storage involves collecting, moving, and protecting valuable data, often infrequently accessed information, to a secure location for long-term preservation and accessibility.

Cloud-based archive storage makes it easy to retrieve data, is cost-effective, and offers compliance features built into secure digital storage environments. Data stored in secure archive storage environments is rarely accessed, and therefore, the storage requirements are somewhat unique compared to frequently used, or high-access, data.

Key components of secure archive storage  

The elements of archive storage are relatively similar to those of general cloud storage, with the main differences related to the longevity of preservation. Components of secure archive storage include: 

• Long-term data retention – By nature, archive storage environments are designed to house data for extended periods of time, sometimes decades, while ensuring that the data remains accessible and usable over the storage timeframe.   

• High durability - Archive data needs to remain intact and accessible over long periods of time. Data durability ensures that the data is reliable and available when it’s needed, without loss or corruption. 

• Enhanced security - Though it is used much less frequently, data residing in archive storage still needs to be protected from unauthorized access, data breaches, corruption, and/or accidental deletion.   

• Scalable – Secure archive storage solutions need to be scalable. With the internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) generating more and more data, exponential data growth is inevitable. As such, scalable storage environments can accommodate increasing data volumes and the evolving storage needs of the future.   

• Low cost – Due to its infrequent access, archive storage is typically more cost-effective than primary or high-access storage.   

Challenges and considerations  

While high-availability storage is designed to meet the challenges of frequent access and regular (hot storage) usage, archive storage differs. Still, it needs to meet many of the same compliance, access controls and security protocols typically found in cloud storage environments. Therefore, when designing and deploying secure archive storage, these challenges and unique considerations need to be addressed, particularly with cloud-based systems.   

Compliance and regulatory requirements   

When considering cloud providers for archive storage, it's important to ensure that the storage environments adhere to all of the statutory regulations applicable to your data. Just because storage is accessed much less frequently doesn’t mean it's immune to cloud storage compliance standards, which can include the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS), to name a few. All have unique requirements regarding encryption, access controls, physical security, and more.   

Access controls  

Access controls are designed to protect archived data from accidental or malicious deletion/corruption by restricting who can access the data and their residing storage environments. With secure archive storage using cloud systems, multi-factor authentication (MFA) is one of the most prevalent access controls that organizations deploy to protect their archived data.  

Going beyond industry-standard MFA, an additional access control feature from Wasabi includes Multi-User Authentication, which allows users to appoint up to three individuals who must collectively confirm an account deletion. If any of the designated individuals decline the deletion, the process is automatically canceled. No individual, be it a hacker, a rogue employee, or an inattentive administrator, possesses the sole authority to delete the account. This is revolutionary when it comes to the world of cloud account security. Wasabi is the only cloud storage provider to offer this security feature.   

Security protocols   

Cloud storage security and regulatory compliance tend to go hand in hand. Data needs to be secure to remain compliant, and each regulation requires organizations to have several security protocols in place. While these requirements can vary depending on the regulations that data needs to adhere to, the most common protocols involve encryption and physical data center security.   

Encryption   

Encryption is simply a process for converting data into a code to prevent unauthorized access. To comply with HIPAA, for example, best practice requires encryption of private health information (PHI) with an advanced encryption standard of 128-bits or higher. Meanwhile, CJIS mandates strong encryption for protecting sensitive data at rest and in transit, including mobile devices.   

Cloud data encryption is absolutely essential to safeguarding sensitive data from interception, which is especially important for storage systems where data is sent and received frequently.  

Physical data security   

Physical data security is a key consideration for cloud-based secure archive storage systems, and much like encryption, security protocols here can vary based on the data to be stored, and the statutory requirements it needs to meet. In most cases, cloud servers, hard drives, storage facilities, or any physical storage (on-premises servers, etc.) that houses data must be protected from unauthorized access. Facility access controls can include locked doors, security alarms, biometric controls, surveillance systems, access logs, and visitor management systems.    

Secure archive storage solutions from Wasabi  

With secure archive storage services, cloud providers commonly create separate storage tiers for their customers to keep infrequently accessed data. These environments, colloquially referred to as “cold storage”, are designed to meet the requirements and considerations listed above to varying degrees.

Wasabi, however, takes a different approach and treats all data as “hot”. This means that, with Wasabi, archived data is quicker to retrieve, yet without all of the associated fees that most other cloud providers charge.   

See how Wasabi can transform your archives and cut the complexity of multiple tiers of storage.