Abstract

This disclosure describes how organizations and people who deposit data into governed custody are protected if a custodian fails, in the manner in which bank deposits are protected when a bank fails. A protecting body supervises certified custodians: it receives their certification status, their financial and operational indicators, and the results of restore tests, and defines thresholds for early intervention. When a custodian weakens, the protecting body can require corrective steps, restrict new deposits or arrange a planned transfer. When a custodian fails, through insolvency, loss of certification, prolonged outage or loss of a site, the protecting body carries out an orderly resolution: it selects a healthy certified custodian, and the deposits are rebuilt there from restore copies already held at other sites, verified against their hashes and lineage records. Because the decryption keys are held by depositors, not by the custodian, the failed custodian cannot take, sell or withhold the data, and the receiving custodian can open deposits only when each depositor's keys are presented under the original terms. Depositors keep their identifiers, terms and earned credits, and access by certified systems resumes from the new custodian, ideally with little interruption. The failed custodian's copies are destroyed with proof. A protection fund, financed by premiums that custodians pay in proportion to the deposits they hold and their risk, covers the costs of resolution and compensates depositors for any loss within declared limits. Depositors can check at any time whether their deposits are protected.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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