Incriptus distributed backup service going international

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 30 November 2011 17:27

Business IT - Security

Adelaide-based Incriptus is taking its distributed backup service that can take advantage of unused disk space in a customer's own network to an international market.

The Incriptus backup system from the company of the same name works by distributing encrypted fragments of files across multiple participating computers. The idea is to harness the otherwise unused space on hard drives for cooperative backup, rather than relying on a centralised location.

The system allows that cooperation to be limited to systems within a company, individual subscribers, or customers of a company selling a rebranded Incriptus service. Incriptus ensures data is only distributed across systems in the same security network, and that there are redundant copies of all data fragments. The company claims almost 70% of computers in the network could be out of action before file recovery is compromised.

"Everybody has unused space on their hard drive. We distribute fragments of data across the hard drives of everyone using Incriptus-powered backup," said founder and CEO Trevor Glen. "It happens in the background and the only place those pieces all come back together again is on the originating computer. No data centre operator ever has access to a complete file and no natural disaster can wipe out a single location of backed up data."

The service works on a 1:1 ratio; ie, for every gigabyte a system backs up to Incriptus, it must provide a gigabyte of storage to the backup pool. (Presumably redundancy is balanced by data compression during backup.)

The company claims the service reduces implementation costs by 90% compared with data centre based remote backup, and is also more "eco-friendly".

Initially working only through Australian partners, the company is now taking the service to the world.

CrashPlan (for Mac, Windows, Linux and Solaris) is a generally comparable service that is free for those who carry out offsite backups on a mutual basis. CrashPlan uses encryption to protect files from prying eyes, and allows for multiple destinations for redundancy. Unlike Incriptus, it does not automatically ensure that redundancy is maintained. The company also offers cloud-based backup services.