Data Backup Digest

Users on cloud storage platform Bitcasa now have a choice on which region they want their data stored in. The four regions are: US, Asian-Pacific, Japan and Europe. By default, users will have their data stored within the region they belong to. However, if desire, customers can choose which region they want their data stored in. For example, someone living in England could decide to have their data stored in Japan, should they so desire.

You might wonder why you would want to choose where your data is stored or why it even matters that this change has been made. Those questions have a number of answers.

First of all, data that is stored closer to you will, usually, be accessible quicker. A user in the US having to receive their data from Europe will have to wait longer than someone who stores their data locally. Of course, the difference isn’t anything extravagant, but in large data transfers it can make a difference.

The main reason that this change is being promoted, however, is because of privacy. The fairly recent NSA revelations, with government surveillance coming to the forefront in the news and consumer’s minds, have caused many to distrust cloud storage. After all, why would you want to store data on the internet if the government can just take a peek whenever they like?

“Data privacy has become a concern for many cloud storage users in recent years. While our user-controlled encryption ensures data is secure, keeping data within the region of the customer further reinforces our commitment to privacy,” said Brian Taptich, CEO of Bitcasa. “This also opens up new opportunities for customers that were in the past worried about losing control of their data.”

The laws of data privacy change within regions and, theoretically, data stored in Europe shouldn’t be allowed to be accessed by the American government, for example. Whether or not that’s actually the case is questionable, but that’s legally how it stands up.

A lot of other cloud services will send user data through the US, even if it doesn’t end up being stored there, which means that it could be accessed along the way. As such, Bitcasa hope this change will settle consumer’s worries about the cloud; the ability to store your data in a region of your choice gives you greater control over the privacy of your data.

Bitcasa claim that they are the first “popular” consumer cloud storage service to keep customer data in their specific region. Bitcasa is indeed a secure choice for many – it encrypts data on the client-side, meaning that it is secure and protected before it even leaves the device to be stored in the cloud.

In practice, storing your data in another region may not have a big effect on things. The speed might stay the same and it could be intercepted by prying eyes anyway. But it offers consumers a feeling of security, of protection and choice, and the company is sure to hope to regain overall trust in the storage marketplace.