On the Efficiency of Decentralized File Storage for Personal Information Management Systems
This addresses the need for secure and compliant personal data management for mobile users, but it is incremental as it builds on existing DLT and DFS technologies.
The paper tackles the problem of efficiently storing personal data in decentralized systems by proposing an architecture that combines Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) and Decentralized File Storage (DFS) to ensure immutability and compliance with regulations like GDPR, with experimental results showing it is viable to build a decentralized Personal Data Storage (PDS) through proper configuration.
This paper presents an architecture, based on Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) and Decentralized File Storage (DFS) systems, to support the use of Personal Information Management Systems (PIMS). DLT and DFS are used to manage data sensed by mobile users equipped with devices with sensing capability. DLTs guarantee the immutability, traceability and verifiability of references to personal data, that are stored in DFS. In fact, the inclusion of data digests in the DLT makes it possible to obtain an unalterable reference and a tamper-proof log, while remaining compliant with the regulations on personal data, i.e. GDPR. We provide an experimental evaluation on the feasibility of the use of DFS. Three different scenarios have been studied: i) a proprietary IPFS approach with a dedicated node interfacing with the data producers, ii) a public IPFS service and iii) Sia Skynet. Results show that through proper configuration of the system infrastructure, it is viable to build a decentralized Personal Data Storage (PDS).