Vanishing files: protocols and regulations for immaterial documents
Rosario Culmone, Maria Concetta De Vivo · International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics · 2017
Regulatory and technological aspects of cloud technology are showing both opportunities and gaps in the rules on security and accessibility. Our proposal aims at addressing a problem that has not yet manifested using a protocol and discussing the normative aspects regarding the possibility of rendering a document completely immaterial. Our article proposes a protocol that uses the network in an unconventional way to make a document fully immaterial. By immaterial we mean that is not localisable anywhere in its entirety. If we continue the analogy to climate, we want to realise a fog of files rather than a cloud. The files are distributed on a public or private network and only the injectors and extractors can access them. The inaccessibility by others, the non-location, and the dynamics of the system offer significant advantages in terms of security but raise some legal problems.