• Home
  • News
  • The sky's the limit for these UMD Invention of...

News Story

The sky's the limit for these UMD Invention of the Year Finalists

news story image

While cloud storage faces growing demand from businesses and clients, it also requires new methods for data protection and retrievability.

Data storage is one of the most popular applications of cloud computing. While cloud storage faces growing demand from businesses and clients, it also requires new methods for data protection and retrievability. The majority of the current methods used for ensuring remote data retrievability are designed for static data, and the few that respond to updates are both costly and require a high level of bandwith. Professors Elaine Shi and Charalampos Papamanthou and the late Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at UC Berkeley Emil Stefanov have developed a dynamic proof of reliability scheme that requires 300 times less bandwith and that efficiently records updates on data without relinquishing the guarantee that a client’s data is authentic. Their dynamic proof of data retrievability can be immediately deployed to cloud storage services and provides an efficient system for ensuring clients’ data remains their own stored material through any number of updates. It thus allows cloud data storage services to expand into industries requiring much higher security.

“I am very excited and honored that the University acknowledges our collaborative effort at the Maryland Cybersecurity Center and UC Berkeley towards building a more secure and usable cloud computing infrastructure,” says Professor Papamanthou from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He highlights the important foundation that their collaborative project establishes for boosting users’ confidence in cloud computing by “preventing data corruption at storage servers like Dropbox and Google Drive without changing the user experience.”

I am very excited and honored that the University acknowledges our collaborative effort at the Maryland Cybersecurity Center and UC Berkeley towards building a more secure and usable cloud computing infrastructure.

Professor Papamanthou

In 2013, the Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC) received 154 invention disclosures from the university renowned faculty. Ten of these inventions were selected as finalists for the Invention of the Year Awards, based on their impact on science, society, and market potential. Winners will be announced on April 29, 2014 at the Celebration of Innovation and Partnerships event.

About OTC: The University of Maryland created OTC in 1986 to provide expert guidance, support, and assistance in safeguarding intellectual property, encouraging research, facilitating technological transfer, and promoting collaborative research and development agreements with industrial sponsors. Visit their website for more information.

Published April 7, 2014