The future of cloud storage

Ten years ago, it became popular around the world to store data from personal computers and mobile devices on some remote servers whose location was completely unknown to users. The creators of operating systems for computers and mobile phones have built this option into all their new programs. This is justified by claims that the data on such servers is very secure and protected from misuse. This is true when the security of personal data is compared to the security of a device in users who know nothing about the protection of their data. Large server centers are managed by professionals. In addition, these centers are being built in places where electricity is cheaper and safer than disappearing and where the risk of earthquakes and other disasters is lower.
Ordinary users are really more protected than some amateur hackers. However, practice has shown that professional services in charge of intrusion into other people's data are more interested in data stored on large servers than on some personal home devices, so they invest more effort in intrusions into such servers.
Practice has also shown that owners of large servers often sell other people's data to analytics companies that link various user data as metadata in a way that allows them to track the habits of individual users in order to send targeted advertisements addressed specifically to them personally. On this, advertising companies made large amounts of money, which was distributed to analytics companies, server owners and owners of large databases of social networks and search engines. And if this can be done by private corporations then so can intelligence services.
All of this has led to the widespread belief that “free” data storage on other people’s servers isn’t exactly free. The metadata of individual users is much more valuable to many than the cost users would have if they kept their data on their devices. The most endangered is personal security, the security of companies, and especially the security of individual countries. Because of this, the European Union has also started thinking about creating its own server centers on its own soil. Many large countries also require large social networks to store the data of their citizens and companies on their soil.
The solution to this problem for ordinary users will not be to keep data on the soil of their states because for individuals the secret services of their own state may be a greater danger than foreign states.
The solution will be to return to operating systems that store all data on a local device that needs software much better protection against foreign intrusion. This solution was expensive a decade ago, but with the rapid development of optical and flash memories that have much higher speeds and much higher capacities than magnetic memories, memory space will become much cheaper. Even mobile phones will be able to store huge amounts of images and video content at a much lower cost.
Optical memories are most commonly used to make backups (archives). Optical memory is any memory method that uses a laser to store and retrieve data from optical media. These are CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, DVD-RAM, WORM and similar solutions.
New optical disks with nanoplasmon hybrid glass composites for storage capacity of 10 TB per disk are also under development, on which data can last up to 600 years, which is great for permanent archives.
Flash memories, which have been used as portable "sticks" for years, are also in rapid development. This type of memory is a small memory chip whose capacity is growing rapidly. When the technique of printing chips with a UV laser is developed, the capacity of such memories will increase a hundredfold.
As the amount of data exchanged over the Internet increases very rapidly, so does the bandwidth of the Internet. The increase in the amount of data is due to the increasing amount of images and movies in an increasing resolution that are exchanged over the network, but also due to the increasing connection of various devices to the network. A significant amount of online traffic is also data that is stored in the "cloud" instead of content creators storing it on their devices.
As the cost of storing data decreases and as the amount of data that can be stored on personal devices increases, the percentage of data stored in the “clouds” will also decrease, thus reducing the possibility of data misuse.
Ordinary users who have a home computer can best protect their data if they keep everything protected on personal home computers protected by password and biometric data. Nevertheless, those who want to fully protect themselves will have to have two computers, one connected to the Internet for communication, and the other not connected to any network. The user himself will have to determine which data should be stored in non-volatile memory, and which data is variable and can be stored for a limited time on magnetic disks.

With larger and cheaper memory chips, cell phones will have a memory large enough to store thousands of hours of high-quality movies, so there will be no need to store such data in remote locations.
Many businesses and organizations have multiple computers connected to a local intranet. Such companies usually have a person in charge of maintaining their local network. With cheaper memory and increased capacity, such companies will have no need to store data on other people's servers. Instead, the operating system in such local area networks could store all data backups on other computers within the same network. In doing so, the software could look at which computer within the local network the disk space is less used, and data backups could be stored on such computers. Many computers within the enterprise, especially those used by executives, are often very underutilized and could thus be used to back up data. With a scattered arrangement of data on different computers, it would be much harder for hackers to find out on which computer the data they want to steal is located.
Despite this data storage on companies' own computers, especially those that have their own development teams for new product development should have individual computers that are not connected to any network, and new products should be developed on such computers, and testing of such products should be conducted. Only in this way could the most important data be protected.
In the same way, local networks that manage important infrastructure such as electricity networks, telephone networks, water supply networks and the like should disconnect the most important computers from the Internet.