Assisted deletion of related content

On primary storage systems content is often replicated, converted or modified, and the users quickly lose control over its dispersal on the system. Deleting content related to a particular project from the system therefore becomes a labor-intensive task for the user. In this paper we present IRCUS, a system that assists the user in securely removing project-related content, but does not require changes to the user's behavior or to any of the system components, such as the file system, kernel or applications. IRCUS transparently integrates within the user's system, operates in user-space and stores the resulting metadata alongside the files. We implemented and evaluated our system and show that its overhead and accuracy are acceptable for practical use and deployment.