a

If we talk about “sandboxing”, happy memories of childhood games in the garden will come to mind.

But when talking about computers and applications, this term refers to a very powerful security feature that separates running programs. This is very important for service/application providers. Anyone that offers a web-based service is potentially under risk of being attacked by hackers or third parties interested in gaining the information that’s been transferred from the user to the server during uploading and vice versa during downloading.

When Swiss DNA Bank’s developing team was crating the application, the number one priority was always to give users the maximum level of security possible due to the company’s concern with the customers’ privacy issues.

The only way to provide 100% guarantees that the data would not be intercepted by malicious third parties was to rely on two separate servers: one on which the application is running and another one on which the data is stored. The two servers are completely independent and physically located in two different venues. The only connection occurs during data uploading and downloading, a phase in which everything is protected by the highest encryption standards.

In addition, the keys to decryption and the encrypted data are saved in physically separated machines, so that even if a system engineer gains access to one of the servers it is impossible for him to enter the Forever database.

Another plus of this security solution is that in case of an application crash occurs due to a very high number of access, there is no risk of data loss or damaging because everything is saved on the separate and highly secure Forever server.

The risk with the average available cloud computing (services which, like Swiss DNA Bank, provide a software that users access form a browser instead of downloading it on their computer), is that you do not know for sure wether the application and the data are on the same server and where the server is physically located. Since data can sometimes be backed-up on one’s computer but is usually hosted on the cloud, in case of a system crash there are no security guarantees concerning a safe back-up procedure.

Unlike most services, thanks to the multiple server solution and localized Forever data storage, Swiss DNA Bank is able to provide a 100% secure service for a risk-free storage.

Ten years from now every new-born will know wether he’ll suffer from diabetes in his teens or a heart condition in his fifties. Not from a pediatric psychic, that is not in sight yet, but from the analysis of the genetic code of the baby. The costs of DNA mapping have already sensibly diminished, but they will drop to less than $1000 in the near future, making this a standard after-birth procedure. The human Genome Project, the first human genome sequencing ever published was completed in 2001 at a cost of $4 billion. Two years ago scientists James Watson and Craig Venter had their genomes mapped with about $1m, and Dr. Stephen Quake, a Stanford engineer, recently decoded is own with less than $50,000 and just a three-member staff. Dr Jay Flately from Illumina, an American company specialized in personalized medicine development by applying innovative genetic technologies, stated in an interview with The Times that most kids will have this simple procedure done within 2019. It will be enough to collect a drop of blood with a heel-prick blood test, similar to the one that is already used to screen for inherited diseases such as cystic fibrosis. “The limitations are sociological; when and where people think it can be applied, the concerns people have about misinformation and the background ethics questions. I think those are actually going to be the limits that push it out to a ten-year timeframe” he said. This procedure will in fact raise eyebrows on privacy concerns: what if an insurance company manages to get its hands on your own sequenced genome and prices your health insurance accordingly? But, as Dr. Flatley added “people have to recognize that this horse is out of the barn, and that your genome probably can’t be protected, because everywhere you go you leave your genome behind.” A used coffee mug or a fallen out hair are enough to track a person’s DNA anyway. This is why it will be very important for proper legislation to be passed. The benefits will be so great that will most likely wipe out the initial concerns. Knowing which kind of cancer or cariovascular problems could affect us, is crucial to early prevention and drugs and dietary advice.