Image & Video Storage¶
Definition¶
Storage strategy for eKYC images (document photos, selfies, liveness videos) — balancing access speed, cost, encryption, and regulatory retention requirements.
Storage Requirements¶
| Data Type | Size | Access Pattern | Encryption |
|---|---|---|---|
| Document image | 1-5 MB | Frequent during processing, rare after | AES-256 at rest |
| Selfie image | 0.5-2 MB | Frequent during processing, rare after | AES-256 at rest |
| Liveness video | 5-20 MB | Processing only, then archive | AES-256 at rest |
| Face embedding | 2 KB | Frequent (dedup queries) | Encrypted, template-protected |
| OCR results | < 10 KB | Frequent | Encrypted |
Estimated Storage (1M verifications/month)¶
| Component | Per Verification | Monthly Total |
|---|---|---|
| Images | ~10 MB | ~10 TB |
| Videos | ~15 MB (if captured) | ~15 TB |
| Metadata + results | ~50 KB | ~50 GB |
| 5-year retention | ~25 MB | ~1.5 PB cumulative |
Key Takeaways¶
Summary
- At scale, image/video storage grows 10-25 TB/month — cost management is essential
- Lifecycle policies (hot → cold) reduce storage costs by 60-80%
- All images must be encrypted at rest (AES-256) with customer-managed keys for enterprise
- Consider storing embeddings instead of raw images where regulations allow — 1000x smaller