Post Syndicated from Molly Clancy original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-is-the-cjis-security-policy/

It’s always been the case that specific industries are subject to their own security standards when it comes to protecting sensitive data. You’ve probably heard of the complex rules and regulations around personal health information and credit card data, for example. Law enforcement agencies do some of the most specialized work possible, so the entire world of criminal justice is subject to its own policies and procedures. Here’s what you need to know about Criminal Justice Information Services and the CJIS Security Policy.

The History of Criminal Justice Information Services

Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) is the largest division of the FBI. It was originally established in 1992 to give law enforcement agencies, national security teams, and the intelligence community shared access to a huge repository of highly sensitive data like fingerprints and active case reports. The CJIS Security Policy exists to safeguard that information by defining protocols for the entire data life cycle wherever it exists, both at rest and in transit. It’s easy to see how important it is for law enforcement agencies to need quick and secure access to this case critical data, but it’s also clear just how detrimental that data could be if it got into the wrong hands.

What Is Criminal Justice Information?

To get a better sense of the CJIS Security Policy and how it works, let’s start by looking at the data it covers. These are the five types of data that qualify as criminal justice information (CJI):

• Biometric data: Data points that can be used to identify a unique individual, like fingerprints, palm prints, iris scans, and facial recognition data.
• Identity history data: A text record of an individual’s civil or criminal history that can be tied to the biometric data that identifies them.
• Biographic data: Information about individuals associated with a particular case, even without unique identifiers or biometric data attached.
• Property data: Information about vehicles or physical property associated with a particular case and accompanied by personally identifiable information.
• Case/Incident history: Data about the history of criminal incidents.

How Does CJIS Compliance Work?

The sensitivity of the types of data that qualify as CJI explains just how complicated the CJIS Security Policy is. To complicate matters further, CJIS (under the FBI and in turn the U.S. Department of Justice) issues regular updates to the Security Policy. The complexity inherent in the national policy, in combination with the pressure of keeping pace with constant changes, has meant that many law enforcement, national security, and intelligence agencies opt not to share data between agencies in lieu of taking the necessary steps to keep it safe in compliance with CJIS.

Each individual government agency is responsible for managing their own CJIS compliance. And the Security Policy applies to anyone interacting with that data, regardless of what system they use to do so or how they are associated with the agency that owns it. That means law enforcement representatives, lawyers, contractors, and private entities, for example, are all subject to the rules laid out in the CJIS Security Policy. What’s more, state governments and their respective CJIS Security Officers are responsible for managing the application of the Security Policy at the state level.

How To Achieve CJIS Compliance

Despite all this complexity, CJIS doesn’t issue any official compliance certifications. Instead, compliance with the Security Policy falls under the purview of each individual organization, agency, or government body. Having the right technical controls in place to satisfy all standardized areas of the policy—and managing those controls on an ongoing basis—is the best (and the only) way to achieve CJIS compliance. These are the 13 key areas listed in the Security Policy:

Area 1: Information Exchange Agreements

Before an agency or organization shares CJI with any other entity, both parties must establish and mutually sign a formal information exchange agreement to certify that everyone involved is in CJIS compliant.

Area 2: Awareness & Training

Any individuals interacting with CJI have to participate in annual specialized training about how they are expected to comply with the Security Policy.

Area 3: Incident Response

Every agency interacting with CJI must have an Incident Response Plan (IRP) in place to ensure their ability to identify security incidents when they occur. IRPs also outline plans to contain and remediate damage as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Area 4: Auditing & Accountability

Organizations have to monitor who accesses CJI, when they access it, and what they do with it. Establishing visibility into interactions like file access, login attempts, password changes, etc. helps dissuade bad actors from accessing data they shouldn’t and also gives agencies the forensic information they need to investigate incidents if breaches do occur.

Area 5: Access Control

Another way to ensure that only authorized users interact with CJI is to limit access based on specific attributes like job title, location, and IP address. Implementing role-based access controls helps limit the availability of CJI, so only the people who need to use that data can access it (and only when absolutely necessary).

Area 6: Identification & Authentication

Because of the rules around auditing & accountability and access control, the Security Policy also stipulates the importance of authenticating every user’s identity. CJIS’ identification & authentication rules include the use of multifactor authentication, regular password resets, and revoked credentials after five unsuccessful login attempts.

Area 7: Configuration Management

Only authorized users should be allowed to change the configuration of the systems that store CJI. This includes simple tasks like performing software updates, but it also extends to the hardware realm, for example when it comes to adding or removing devices from a network.

Area 8: Media Protection

Compliant agencies must establish policies to protect all forms of media, including putting procedures in place for the secure disposal of that media once it is no longer in use.

Area 9: Physical Protection

Any physical spaces (like on-premises server rooms, for example) should be locked, monitored by camera equipment, and equipped with alarms to prevent unauthorized access.

Area 10: System & Communications Protection

Cybersecurity best practices should be in place, including perimeter protection measures like Intrusion Prevention Systems, firewalls, and anti-virus solutions. In the category of encryption, FIPS 140-2 certification and a minimum of 128 bit strength are required.

Area 11: Formal Audits

Although the CJIS doesn’t issue compliance certifications, agencies still have to be available for formal audits by CJIS representatives (like the CJIS Audit Unit and the CJIS Systems Agency) at least once every three years.

Area 12: Personnel Security

Any personnel with access to CJI have to undergo a screening process and background checks (including fingerprinting) to ensure their fitness to handle sensitive data.

Area 13: Mobile Devices

In order to remain in compliance, organizations have to develop acceptable use policies that govern how mobile devices are used, how they connect to the internet, what applications they can have on them, and even what websites they can access. In this case, mobile devices include smartphones, tablets, and laptops that can access CJI. When representatives use mobile devices to access CJI, those devices (and that access) are subject to all the areas of the Security Policy.

How Backblaze Supports CJIS Compliance

For any organization to achieve CJIS compliance, any partner or vendor that accesses, interacts with, or stores their CJI also needs to comply with the same Security Policy standards. You guessed it: that means cloud storage providers too. It’s your job to ensure that your organization is CJIS-compliant before transmitting your data to any cloud storage provider. At Backblaze, we follow the same security standards outlined in the CJIS Security Policy so that you can trust that your CJI is protected and your agency is in compliance even while it’s being stored in Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage or via our Business Backup product.

The post What is the CJIS Security Policy? appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Post Syndicated from Pat Patterson original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/go-wild-with-wildcards-in-backblaze-b2-command-line-tool-3-7-1/

File transfer tools such as Cyberduck, FileZilla Pro, and Transmit implement a graphical user interface (GUI), which allows users to manage and transfer files across local storage and any number of services, including cloud object stores such as Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage. Some tasks, however, require a little more power and flexibility than a GUI can provide. This is where a command line interface (CLI) shines. A CLI typically provides finer control over operations than a GUI tool, and makes it straightforward to automate repetitive tasks. We recently released version 3.7.0 (and then, shortly thereafter, version 3.7.1) of the Backblaze B2 Command Line Tool, alongside version 1.19.0 of the underlying Backblaze B2 Python SDK. Let’s take a look at the highlights in the new releases, and why you might want to use the Backblaze B2 CLI rather than the AWS equivalent.

Battle of the CLI’s: Backblaze B2 vs. AWS

As you almost certainly already know, Backblaze B2 has an S3-compatible API in addition to its original API, now known as the B2 Native API. In most cases, we recommend using the S3-compatible API, since a rich ecosystem of S3 tools and knowledge has evolved over the years.

While the AWS CLI works perfectly well with Backblaze B2, and we explain how to use it in our B2 Developer Quick-Start Guide, it’s slightly clunky. The AWS CLI allows you to set your access key id and secret access key via either environment variables or a configuration file, but you must override the default endpoint on the command line with every command, like this:

% aws --endpoint-url https://s3.us-west-004.backblazeb2.com s3api list-buckets

This is very tiresome if you’re working interactively at the command line! In contrast, the B2 CLI retrieves the correct endpoint from Backblaze B2 when it authenticates, so the command line is much more concise:

% b2 list-buckets

Additionally, the CLI provides fine-grain access to Backblaze B2-specific functionality, such as application key management and replication.

Automating Common Tasks with the B2 Command Line Tool

If you’re already familiar with CLI tools, feel free to skip to the next section.

Imagine you’ve uploaded a large number of WAV files to a Backblaze B2 Bucket for transcoding into .mp3 format. Once the transcoding is complete, and you’ve reviewed a sample of the .mp3 files, you decide that you can delete the .wav files. You can do this in a GUI tool, opening the bucket, navigating to the correct location, sorting the files by extension, selecting all of the .wav files, and deleting them. However, the CLI can do this in a single command:

% b2 rm --withWildcard --recursive my-bucket 'audio/*.wav'

If you want to be sure you’re deleting the correct files, you can add the --dryRun option to show the files that would be deleted, rather than actually deleting them:

% b2 rm --dryRun --withWildcard --recursive my-bucket 'audio/*.wav'
audio/aardvark.wav
audio/barracuda.wav
...
audio/yak.wav
audio/zebra.wav

You can find a complete list of the CLI’s commands and their options in the documentation.

Let’s take a look at what’s new in the latest release of the Backblaze B2 CLI.

Major Changes in B2 Command Line Tool Version 3.7.0

New rm command

The most significant addition in 3.7.0 is a whole new command: rm. As you might expect, rm removes files. The CLI has always included the low-level delete-file-version command (to delete a single file version) but you had to call that multiple times and combine it with other commands to remove all versions of a file, or to remove all files with a given prefix.

The new rm command is significantly more powerful, allowing you to delete all versions of a file in a single command:

% b2 rm --versions --withWildcard --recursive my-bucket images/san-mateo.png

Let’s unpack that command:

• %: represents the command shell’s prompt. (You don’t type this.)
• b2: the B2 CLI executable.
• rm: the command we’re running.
• --versions: apply the command to all versions. Omitting this option applies the command to just the most recent version.
• --withWildcard: treat the folderName argument as a pattern to match the file name.
• --recursive: descend into all folders. (This is required with –withWildcard.)
• my-bucket: the bucket name.
• images/san-mateo.png: the file to be deleted. There are no wildcard characters in the pattern, so the file name must match exactly. Note: there is no leading ‘/’ in Backblaze B2 file names.

As mentioned above, the --dryRun argument allows you to see what files would be deleted, without actually deleting them. Here it is with the ‘*’ wildcard to apply the command to all versions of the .png files in /images. Note the use of quotes to avoid the command shell expanding the wildcard:

% b2 rm --dryRun --versions --withWildcard --recursive my-bucket 'images/*.png'
images/amsterdam.png
images/sacramento.png

% b2 rm --dryRun --versions –recursive my-bucket
index.html
images/amsterdam.png
images/phoenix.jpeg
images/sacramento.png
stylesheets/style.css

New --withWildcard option for the ls command

The ls command gains the --withWildcard option. It operates identically as described above. In fact, b2 rm --dryRun --withWildcard --recursive executes the exact same code as b2 ls --withWildcard --recursive. For example:

% b2 ls --withWildcard --recursive my-bucket 'images/*.png'
images/amsterdam.png
images/sacramento.png


You can combine --withWildcard with any of the existing options for ls, for example --long:

% b2 ls --long --withWildcard --recursive my-bucket 'images/*.png'
4_z71d55dummyid381234ed0c1b_f108f1dummyid163b_d2dummyid_m165048_c004
_v0402014_t0016_u01dummyid48198 upload 2023-02-09 16:50:48 714686 images/amsterdam.png
4_z71d55dummyid381234ed0c1b_f1149bdummyid1141_d2dummyid_m165048_c004
_v0402010_t0048_u01dummyid48908 upload 2023-02-09 16:50:48 549261 images/sacramento.png

New --incrementalMode option for upload-file and sync

The new --incrementalMode option saves time and bandwidth when working with files that grow over time, such as log files, by only uploading the changes since the last upload. When you use the --incrementalMode option with upload-file or sync, the B2 CLI looks for an existing file in the bucket with the b2FileName that you supplied, and notes both its length and SHA-1 digest. Let’s call that length l. The CLI then calculates the SHA-1 digest of the first l bytes of the local file. If the digests match, then the CLI can instruct Backblaze B2 to create a new file comprising the existing file and the remaining bytes of the local file.

That was a bit complicated, so let’s look at a concrete example. My web server appends log data to a file, access.log. I’ll see how big it is, get its SHA-1 digest, and upload it to a B2 Bucket:

% ls -l access.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 ppatterson staff 5525849 Feb 9 15:55 access.log

% sha1sum access.log
ff46904e56c7f9083a4074ea3d92f9be2186bc2b access.log

The upload-file command outputs all of the file’s metadata, but we’ll focus on the SHA-1 digest, file info, and size.

% b2 upload-file my-bucket access.log access.log
...
{
...
"contentSha1": "ff46904e56c7f9083a4074ea3d92f9be2186bc2b",
...
"fileInfo": {
"src_last_modified_millis": "1675986940381"
},
...
"size": 5525849,
...
}

As you might expect, the digest and size match those of the local file.

Time passes, and our log file grows. I’ll first upload it as a different file, so that we can see the default behavior when the B2 Cloud Storage file is simply replaced:

% ls -l access.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 ppatterson staff 11047145 Feb 9 15:57 access.log

% sha1sum access.log
7c97866ff59330b67aa96d7a481578d62e030788 access.log

% b2 upload-file my-bucket access.log new-access.log
{
...
"contentSha1": "7c97866ff59330b67aa96d7a481578d62e030788",
...
"fileInfo": {
"src_last_modified_millis": "1675987069538"
},
...
"size": 11047145,
...
}

Everything is as we might expect—the CLI uploaded 11,047,145 bytes to create a new file, which is 5,521,296 bytes bigger than the initial upload.

Now I’ll use the --incrementalMode option to replace the first Backblaze B2 file:

% b2 upload-file --quiet my-bucket access.log access.log
...
{
...
"contentSha1": "none",
...
"fileInfo": {
"large_file_sha1": "7c97866ff59330b67aa96d7a481578d62e030788",
"plan_id": "ea6b099b48e7eb7fce01aba18dbfdd72b56eb0c2",
"src_last_modified_millis": "1675987069538"
},
...
"size": 11047145,
...
}

The digest is exactly the same, but it has moved from contentSha1 to fileInfo.large_file_sha1, indicating that the file was uploaded as separate parts, resulting in a large file. The CLI didn’t need to upload the initial 5,525,849 bytes of the local file; it instead instructed Backblaze B2 to combine the existing file with the final 5,521,296 bytes of the local file to create a new version of the file.

There are several more new features and fixes to existing functionality in version 3.7.0—make sure to check out the B2 CLI changelog for a complete list.

Major Changes in B2 Python SDK 1.19.0

Most of the changes in the B2 Python SDK support the new features in the B2 CLI, such as adding wildcard matching to the Bucket.ls operation and adding support for incremental upload and sync. Again, you can inspect the B2 Python SDK changelog for a comprehensive list.

Get to Grips with B2 Command Line Tool Version 3.7.0 3.7.1

Whether you’re working on Windows, Mac or Linux, it’s straightforward to install or update the B2 CLI; full instructions are provided in the Backblaze B2 documentation.

Note that the latest version is now 3.7.1. The only changes from 3.7.0 are a handful of corrections to help text and that the Mac binary is no longer provided, due to shortcomings in the Mac version of PyInstaller. Instead, we provide the Mac version of the CLI via the Homebrew package manager.

The post Go Wild with Wildcards in the Backblaze B2 Command Line Tool 3.7.1 appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Post Syndicated from Barry Kaufman original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/shooting-for-the-clouds-how-one-photo-storage-service-moved-beyond-physical-devices/

The sheer number of creative and unique ways our customers and partners utilize Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage never ceases to amaze us. Whether it’s pairing our storage with a streaming platform to deliver seamless video or protecting research data that is saving lives, we applaud their ingenuity. From time to time, we like to put the spotlight on one of these inspired customers, which brings us to the company we’re highlighting today: Monument, a photo management service with a strong focus on security and privacy.

The TL;DR

Situation: The Monument story started with a physical device where customers could securely save photos, but they saw the winds shifting to the cloud. They wanted to offer users the flexibility and automation that the cloud provides while maintaining their focus on privacy and security.

Solution: Monument launched their cloud-based offering, Monument Cloud, with Backblaze as its storage backbone. User photos are encrypted and stored in Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, and are accessible via the Monument Cloud app.

Result: Monument Cloud eliminates the need for users to maintain a physical device at their homes or offices. Users just install the Monument Cloud app on their devices and their photos and videos are automatically backed up, fully encrypted, organized, and shareable.

What Is Monument?

Monument was founded in 2016 by a group of engineers and designers who wanted an easy way to back up and organize their photos without giving up their privacy and security. Since smartphones saturated the market, the average person’s digital photo archive has grown exponentially. The average user has around 2,100 photos on their smartphone at any given time, and that’s not even counting the photos stashed away on various old laptops, hard drives, USBs, and devices.

Photo management services like Google Photos stepped in to help folks corral all of those memories. But, most photo management services are a black box—you don’t know how they’re using your data or your images. Monument wanted to give folks the same functionality as something like iCloud or Google Photos while also keeping their private data private.

“There are plenty of photo storage solutions right now, but they come with limitations and fail to offer transparency about their privacy policies—how photos are being used or processed” said Monument’s co-founder Ercan Erciyes. “At Monument, we reimagined how we store and access our photos and provided a clutter-free experience while keeping users in the center, not their personal data.”

They launched their first generation product in 2017—a physical storage device with advanced AI software that helps users manage photo libraries between devices and organize photos by faces, scenery, and other properties. The hardware side was fueled by two rounds of Kickstarter funding, each helping create new versions of the company’s smart storage device powered by a neural processing unit (NPU) that lived on-device and allowed access from anywhere.

An Eye for Secure Photo Storage

That emphasis on privacy fueled the software side of Monument’s offering, an AI-driven approach that allows easy searchability of photos without processing any of the metadata on Monument’s end. Advanced image recognition couples with slick de-duplication features for an experience that catalogs photos without exposing photographers’ data to algorithms that influence their choices. No ads, no profiling, no creepy trackers, and Monument doesn’t use or sell customers’ personal data.

We were getting a lot of questions along the lines of, “What happens if my house catches fire?” or “What if there is physical damage to the device?” so we could see there was a lot of interest in a cloud solution.”

—Ercan Erciyes, Co-Founder, Monument Labs, Inc.

The Gathering Cloud

With the rise of cloud storage, Monument saw their typical consumer shifting away from on-prem solutions. “We were getting a lot of questions along the lines of, ‘What happens if my house catches fire?’ or ‘What if there is physical damage to the device?’ so we could see there was a lot of interest in a cloud solution,” said Ercan. “Plus there were a lot of users that didn’t want a physical device in their home.”

Their answer: Offer the same privacy-first service through a comprehensive cloud solution.

Using Free Credits Wisely

Launching a cloud-based storage service built around their philosophy of privacy and security was a clear necessity for the company’s future. To kick off their move to the cloud, Monument utilized free startup credits from AWS. But, they knew free credits wouldn’t last forever. Rather than using the credits to build a minimum viable product as fast as humanly possible, they took a very measured approach. “The credits are sweet,” Ercan said, “But you need to pay attention to your long-term vision. You need to have a backup plan, so to speak.” (We think so, too.)

Ercan ran the numbers with success in mind and realized they’d ultimately lose money if they built the infrastructure for Monument Cloud on AWS. He also didn’t want to accumulate tech debt and become locked in to AWS.

They ended up using the credits to develop the AI model, but not to build their infrastructure. For that they turned to specialized cloud providers.

Integrating Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

Monument created a lean tech stack that incorporated Backblaze B2 for long-term encrypted storage. They run their AI software on Vultr, a Backblaze compute partner that offers free egress fees between the two services. And, they use another specialized cloud provider to store thumbnails that are displayed in the Monument Cloud app. The cloud service has quickly become the company’s flagship offering, drawing 25,000 active users.

Group Photos: Serving New Customers

With infrastructure that will scale without cutting into their margins, Monument is poised to serve an increasing number of customers who care about what happens to their personal data. More and more, customers are seeking out alternatives to big name cloud providers, using services like DuckDuckGo instead of Google Search or WhatsApp instead of garden variety text messaging apps. With a distributed, multi-cloud system, they can serve these types of customers with a cloud option while keeping data privacy front and center. And the customers that gravitate to this value proposition are wide-ranging.

Of course, the first ones you might think of would be prolific photo takers or even amateur photographers, but Ercan pointed out some surprising use cases for their technology. “We are seeing a lot of different use cases coming up from schools, real estate companies, and even elder care systems,” he said. With Monument’s new cloud solution, classrooms are exploring new online frontiers in education, and families scattered around the world are able to share photos with their elderly relatives.

A Monument to Security

Challenging monster brands like Google is no small task as a small team of just five people. Monument does it by keeping a laser focus on their core values and their customers’ needs. “If you keep the user’s needs in the center, building a solution doesn’t require an army of engineers,” Ercan said. Without having to worry about how to use customer data to build algorithms that keep advertisers happy, Monument can focus on serving their customers what they actually need—a photo management solution that just works.

The post Shooting for the Clouds: How One Photo Storage Service Moved Beyond Physical Devices appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Post Syndicated from Jennifer Newman original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/simplify-data-protection-with-backblaze-and-commvault/

The most effective backups are the ones you never have to think about—It’s that simple. For anyone in charge of data protection—IT Admins, IT Directors, CTOs and CIOs, managed service providers, and others—driving to that level of simplicity is always the goal. A new partnership between Backblaze and Commvault brings you one step closer to achieving that goal.

Now, Commvault customers can select Backblaze B2 as a cloud storage destination for their Commvault backups and data management needs. Read on to learn more about the partnership.

What Is Commvault?

Commvault is a global leader in data management. Their Intelligent Data Services help organizations transform how they protect, store, and use data. They offer a simple, unified Data Management Platform that spans all of a company’s data, no matter where it lives—on-premises, or in a hybrid or multi-cloud environment—or how it’s structured—in legacy applications, databases, virtual machines, or in containers.

How Does This Partnership Benefit Joint Customers?

Joint customers gain access to easy, affordable cloud storage that integrates with Commvault’s software. The partnership benefits joint customers in a few key ways:

• Quick setup: Get started with a seamless integration.
• Easy administration: Manage data in one platform.
• Better backups: Protect your data from ransomware risks, equipment failure, damage, theft, and human error.
• Faster recoveries: Restore your environment quickly in the event of a disaster.
• Affordable storage: Backblaze is ⅕ the cost of major cloud providers.

Take Advantage of Capacity-Based Pricing with Backblaze B2 Reserve

Joint customers who prefer predictable cloud spend rather than consumption-based pricing can take advantage of Backblaze B2 Reserve. The Backblaze B2 Reserve offering is capacity-based, starting at 20TB, with key features, including:

• Free egress up to the amount of storage purchased per month.
• Free transaction calls.
• Enhanced migration services.
• No delete penalties.
• Upgraded Tera support.

Customers can purchase B2 Reserve through our channel partners. If you’re interested in participating or just want to learn more, contact our Sales team.

If you’re a channel partner and Commvault is in your suite of offerings, we’d love to engage with you. Register on our Partner Portal to get started with offering Backblaze B2 as a backup target.

Customer Spotlight: How Pittsburg State Protects Data in Tornado Alley

Pittsburg State University, located in the heart of Tornado Alley in Kansas, took steps to protect their data by deploying private cloud infrastructure via Commvault Distributed Storage. They established two nodes on-premises and a third across the state for geographic separation, but they wanted another layer of protection. They added Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage giving them peace of mind that their data would be better protected from threats like ransomware. Since Backblaze is integrated with Commvault, Commvault de-duplicates the data, then sends a copy to Backblaze nightly.

“Backblaze B2 had the capability we lacked. I bolted it onto our system, so now I have off-site backup that is safe and well-protected from a regional disaster in Kansas.”
—Tim Pearson, Director for IT Infrastructure and Security, Pittsburg State University

Getting Started with Backblaze B2 and Commvault

Ready to simplify your Commvault backup storage? Check out our Commvault Quickstart Guide for a walk through on how to set up Backblaze B2 as your Commvault cloud storage target.

The post Simplify Data Protection with Backblaze and Commvault appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Post Syndicated from Pat Patterson original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/build-a-cloud-storage-app-in-30-minutes/

The working title for this developer tutorial was originally the “Polyglot Quickstart.” It made complete sense to me—it’s a “multilingual” guide that shows developers how to get started with Backblaze B2 using different programming languages—Java, Python, and the command line interface (CLI). But the folks on our publishing and technical documentation teams wisely advised against such an arcane moniker.

Fortunately for you, readers, and you, Google algorithms, we landed on the much easier to understand Backblaze B2 Developer Quick-Start Guide, and we’re launching it today. Read on to learn all about it.

Start Building Applications on Backblaze B2 in 30 Minutes or Less

Yes, you heard that correctly. Whether or not you already have experience working with cloud object storage, this tutorial will get you started building applications that use Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage in 30 minutes or less. You’ll learn how scripts and applications can interact with Backblaze B2 via the AWS SDKs and CLI and the Backblaze S3-compatible API.

The tutorial covers how to:

• Sign up for a Backblaze B2 account.
• Create a public bucket, upload and view files, and create an application key using the Backblaze B2 web console.
• Interact with the Backblaze B2 Storage Cloud using Java, Python, and the CLI: listing the contents of buckets, creating new buckets, and uploading files to buckets.

This first release of the tutorial covers Java, Python, and the CLI. We’ll add more programming languages in the future. Right now we’re looking at JavaScript, C#, and Go. Let us know in the comments if there’s another language we should cover!

What Else Can You Do?

If you already have experience with Amazon S3, the Quick-Start Guide shows how to use the tools and techniques you already know with Backblaze B2. You’ll be able to quickly build new applications and modify existing ones to interact with the Backblaze Storage Cloud. If you’re new to cloud object storage, on the other hand, this is the ideal way to get started.

Watch this space for future tutorials on topics such as:

• Downloading files from a private bucket programmatically.
• Uploading large files by splitting them into chunks.
• Creating pre-signed URLs so that users can access private files securely.
• Deleting versions, files and buckets.

Want More?

Have questions about any of the above? Curious about how to use Backblaze B2 with your specific application? Already a wiz at this and ready to do more? Here’s how you can get in touch and get involved:

• Sign up for Backblaze’s virtual user group.
• Find us at Developer Week.
• Let us know in the comments which programming languages we should add to the Quick-Start Guide.

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Post Syndicated from Troy Liljedahl original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/stable-diffusion-and-backblaze-create-a-masterpiece-from-a-bucket-of-your-own-images/

AI is really having a moment. There’s DALL-E, Lensa, ChatGPT. Your social media feed is probably full of new avatars and AI-generated haiku. Naturally, we at Backblaze were intrigued by this brave new world of AI-generated content. The technology has been wildly popular, but is not without controversy, raising questions about intellectual property, copyright law, artist disenfranchisement, possible displacement of jobs, and general fear over the rise of the machines. On the other side of that coin, there’s definitely a place for AI in the future of work and life. So, I wanted to experiment with it.

Let’s start with Stable Diffusion.

Stable Diffusion is one of the new text-to-image technologies popping up all over the internet that allows users to input words and phrases and get back amazing pictures created by its deep learning model. What makes Stable Diffusion so interesting is that it has been open sourced to allow anyone to create their own models for text-to-image generation.

Today, I’ll walk through how you can do just that using Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage.

Kicking the Stable Diffusion Tires

After playing with an online instance of Stable Diffusion, I sought out content on some more ways to use the AI tool. I found several examples of how to use Stable Diffusion with your own images like this one and this one. The most common use case for this was taking advantage of AI to create art from a model based on your own face. Sounds cool, right? But what if I also had a bunch more pictures in Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage? Could I do the same thing to create art, graphics, branded images, and more, from my content in the cloud? The answer is a resounding YES.

Use Cases for Stable Diffusion

For me, this was a fun experiment, but we see a number of different ways this set up could be used both individually and for businesses. I started with about 20 images or so as fodder for Stable Diffusion’s algorithm. But, that’s just the beginning.

Let’s say you’re a marketing team at a small company. You could use Stable Diffusion’s paid version and get access to hundreds of thousands of random images from Google, but you really only care about analyzing and generating photos that are relevant to your business. So, you run Stable Diffusion in a cloud compute instance and have it analyze a Backblaze B2 Bucket where you store your own library of images, which you’ve probably been collecting for years. Set up that way, you have your own customized AI engine that analyzes and generates only images that are pertinent to your needs, rather than a bunch of images you don’t care about.

In this experiment, I used Google Colab, which worked well for my needs. But for a real implementation, you could use a Backblaze cloud compute partner like Vultr. Egress between Backblaze and Vultr is free, so the analysis won’t cost you anything beyond what it costs to use the two services.

This could be hugely useful for marketing teams, but we also see the value for individuals or businesses who want to keep their data private but still take advantage of AI technology. This way, you aren’t serving up images on public sites.

So, how does it all work? Let’s get into it.

Getting Started with Stable Diffusion and Backblaze B2

What you’ll need:

• A Backblaze B2 account. You can sign up for free here.
• A Google account.
• A smartphone to take pictures if you don’t have 20 or so pictures of whatever subject you want to use lying around.
• Whatever software tool you’d like to use to mount Backblaze B2 as a drive on your computer. I use Rclone in this example but any cloud drive software will work.

The first thing you’ll need to do is create an account at Hugging Face. Hugging Face is the home of the modern AI community and is where Stable Diffusion lives. In your Hugging Face account, navigate to your Account Settings and go to Access Tokens—we’ll need one of these to allow our environment to use the Stable Diffusion engines.

Now as to the environment, this can be on your own computer, in a virtual machine (VM), really wherever. My favorite (and free) method I found was a Google Colab notebook created by GitHub user TheLastBen that makes the process so incredibly simple that anyone can do this. The Colab notebook also takes advantage of DreamBooth, a Google Research project that provides for incredible detail on the art and images created by a diffusion model. In short, this is the easiest way to get really good looking AI art. You can get started with the Colab notebook here.

In the Colab notebook there are a ton of different options and a great step-by-step guide that explains them, but I’ll walk you through the basic settings to get going:

1. First, hit the Play button next to Dependencies.
2. Once that’s done, copy your User Access Token from your Hugging Face account.
3. In the Model Download section, paste that User Access Token into the Huggingface_Token field.
4. Click the Play button for Model Download.
5. You’ll see the script run below all the fields here. You can proceed when you see “DONE!”
6. Finally, in the Dreambooth section, provide a name in the Session_Name field. This will be the name of the session that gets saved in your Google Drive. That name can be reused later to skip these steps next time.

Training the Stable Diffusion Model

Now the pictures: You’ll want at least 20 pictures or so for your AI model to analyze in order to avoid creating a bunch of generic person art or nightmare fuel. So bust out your phone and take some selfies! If you have a friend to throw in two or three full body pictures this will help as well. A few optional tips:

• Use different expressions and angles.
• Use different backgrounds if you can.
• Use a square or 1:1 ratio setting. By default, Stable Diffusion’s default image size is 512 x 512 pixels, so using square images makes your input more similar to your desired output.

If you’re an iPhone user, you will need to take one extra step here to save your files in JPEG format. You can find a guide for that in this article.

As you save your photos, make sure the file names include the name you’re going to use when generating your AI art. For example, my photos were all named troy (1).jpg, troy (2).jpg, troy (3).jpg, etc. This is important so that the AI understands what to call you (or your subject) when generating your images.

Once you have your photos, it’s time to upload them to a Bucket in Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage. You can easily do this in the Backblaze mobile app or on the Backblaze website.

With your selfies safely in Backblaze B2, make sure you make them accessible on your computer using a tool such as Rclone mount. If you don’t have an account yet, you can check out our guide on how to set up and configure Rclone mount.

You might be wondering why you should upload the photos to a Backblaze B2 Bucket and then mount the Bucket so that we can access it locally, rather than just saving the files to a local folder?

The answer is simple. In this example, we’re working with a few images representing a single subject, so you likely won’t have issues working from your local drive. As you further experiment with more subjects and more images of each subject, you’ll likely outgrow your local drive. Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage scales infinitely so you won’t have to worry about running out of space.

Now, back to the Colab notebook, hit the play button on Instance Images and click the button that shows up to Choose Files. In the pop up, choose your mounted instance of your B2 Bucket and select the photos.

Once they are uploaded, skip the Concept Images section and click the play button for Training. If you’ve done everything right, you should see some ASCII art like this:

Depending on how many photos you selected, this can take some time. So grab a coffee, go for a walk, listen to a podcast, or perhaps all three.

Creating Your Own AI-Generated Masterpieces

Once complete, click the Play button under Test the Trained Model. This will launch a temporary instance of Stable Diffusion with your new custom model in Gradio, which is an open-source Python library for running machine learning apps. Click the Gradio link generated and we’re ready to start making some AI art.

Again, there are a ton of options and configurations but all you really need to do at this point is enter some text into the Prompt box and click the big Generate button.

Creating prompts for AI art is quickly becoming its own art form. There are tons of resources out there to inspire you, but here are a few prompts I used along with the resulting art.

Pro Tip: You may need to click the Generate button a few times if something looks off. This is totally normal—your new AI friend is learning over time, and it does this by repeating the generation process.

Prompt: “Photo of troy digital painting”

Prompt: “Photo of troy person digital painting”

Prompt: “Photo of troy person digital painting asymmetrical headshot smiling”

And finally for something fun…

Prompt: ”photo of troy person hand-drawn cartoon”

It even has an artist signature! Although I’m not sure who fRny Y is?

So, there you have it. Your very own AI engine, customized to generate versions of your face (or your library of images).

Good luck to all the budding AI artists out there. If you give this a try, we’d love to see your images on social media. You can find us @backblaze on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I look forward to seeing what you all create!

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Post Syndicated from Stephanie Doyle original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/amazon-sunsets-cloud-drive/

Another one bites the dust. Amazon announced they’re putting Amazon Cloud Drive in the rearview to focus on Amazon Photos in a phased deprecation through December 2023. Today, we’ll dig into what this means for folks with data on Amazon Cloud Drive, especially those with files other than photos and videos.

Dear Amazon Drive User

When Amazon dropped the news, they explained the phased approach they would take to deprecating Amazon Drive. They’re not totally eliminating Drive—yet. Here’s what they’ve done so far, and what they plan to do moving forward:

• October 31, 2022: Amazon removed the Drive app from iOS and Android app stores. The app doesn’t get bug fixes and security updates anymore.
• January 31, 2023: Uploading to the Amazon Drive website will be cut off. You will have read-only access to your files.
• December 31, 2023: Amazon Drive will no longer be supported and access to files will be cut off. Every file stored on Amazon Drive, except photo or video files, needs a new home. Users can access photo and video files on Amazon Photos.

Now, users face two options for what to do with files stored on Amazon Drive:

1. Follow instructions to download Amazon Photos for iOS and Android devices. And, use the Amazon Drive website to download and store all other files locally or with another service.
2. Transfer your entire library of photos, videos, and other data to another service.

A Quick History of Amazon Cloud Drive

In 2014, Amazon offered free, unlimited photo storage on Amazon Cloud Drive as a loyalty perk for Prime members. The following year, they rolled out a subscription-based offering to store other types of files in addition to photos—video, documents, etc.—on Cloud Drive.

Then, in 2017, they capped the free tier at 5GB. This was just one of many in a string of cloud storage providers ending a free offering and forcing users to pay or move.

All Amazon account holders—regardless of whether they paid for Prime or not—got 5GB for photos and other file types free of charge. If you wanted or needed more storage than that, you had to sign up for the subscription-based offering starting at $11.99 per year for 100GB of storage, and prices went up from there.

You might consider this the beginning of the end for Amazon Cloud Drive.

Why Say Goodbye?

When tech companies deprecate a feature—as Amazon has done with Drive—it’s for any number of reasons:

1. To combine one feature with another.
2. To rectify naming inconsistencies.
3. When a newer version makes supporting the older one impossible or impractical.
4. To avoid flaws in a necessary feature.
5. When a better alternative replaced the feature.
6. To simplify the system as a whole.

Amazon’s reason for deprecating Drive? To provide a dedicated solution for photos and videos. The company stated, “We are taking the opportunity to more fully focus our efforts on Amazon Photos to provide customers a dedicated solution for photos and video storage.” Unfortunately, that leaves folks who store anything else high and dry.

Where Do We Go From Here?

The bottom line: Amazon Drive customers must park emails, documents, spreadsheets, PDFs, and text files somewhere else. If you’re an Amazon Drive customer looking to move your files out before you lose access, we invite you to try Backblaze B2. The first 10GB is on us.

How to Get Started with Backblaze B2

1. If you’re not a customer, first sign up for B2 Cloud Storage.
2. If you’re already a customer, enable B2 Cloud Storage in your “My Settings” tab. You can follow our Quick Start Guide for more detailed instructions.



3. Download your data from Amazon Drive.
4. Upload your data to Backblaze B2. Many customers choose to do so directly through the web interface, while others prefer to use integrated transfer solutions like Cyberduck, which is free and open-source, or Panic’s Transmit for Macs.
5. Sit back and relax knowing your data is safely stored in the Backblaze B2 Storage Cloud.

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