Between Snowden, WikiLeaks, and the most recent celebrity privacy breaches, many people have naturally begun to grow concerned with the cloud’s security. Luckily for these concerned webizens, there’s WEDG — a personal cloud computing device that can keep personal data safer than other third-party hosts, while also providing all the advantages of using the cloud.
Essentially, WEDG is a personal server. It’s an external harddrive with 512-bit encryption and Internet-connectivity capabilities, so it can function just like Google Drive or Dropbox. Instead of tucking personal files away in some mysterious, third-party server somewhere out in the world, users can keep all of their files available on WEDG, and can access it from any Internet-connected device.
If big name cloud hosts were banks, then WEDG would be the mattress under which users stuff their private data.
“Right now it seems our privacy is at a constant threat from numerous bodies, and most of the time we don’t even know it’s going on, yet we have little choice for a real alternative,” said founder and CEO Shehbaz Afza. “WEDG aims to be that real all-in-one alternative. … [It] really puts the user/owner in control, there is a simple hard drive upgrade procedure; multiple secure backup options and we also provide a dynamic DNS routing service to help novice users get started quickly.”
However, as great as WEDG sounds for individual users, it may not be all that great of an alternative for larger businesses, who have heavy data needs.
“What goes in to cloud web hosting is much more than a little box, a major issue I see here is the single point of failure,” says Jason Eisert, CEO at Sectorlink. “This may be a good device for the hobbyist or developer to show off their skills or keep data in house that can be accessed remotely, however, running a business from it just does not seem practical. Security issues are a major concern for any connected device.”
As of now, the device’s developers are crowdfunding it through Indiegogo. The basic package starts at $360, and comes with an entire terabyte of storage space. Considering the fact that it’s a one time fee for an immense amount of cloud storage, that’s a fairly reasonable price.