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Storage Security
Storage Security is not about turning on the right configuration options on your XYZ brand server appliance. It's about applying solid, methodical security practices to your storage systems, regardless of whether they are disks directly attached to a single computer, Network Attached Storage or part of a Storage Area Network. The authors address the full security cycle, too, starting with evaluating the security of proposed new storage solutions. Comparative data in hand, the book shows you how to narrow the field to a single solution that offers the best balance between functionality and security.
And once the system is selected, you can't stop there. You've got to decide on appropriate security policies for the new storage system, draft and implement a backup and restore plan, deal with disaster recovery and take care of a host of other issues. In short, this is a good guide to an entire range of considerations necessary to select, deploy and manage a secure storage solution.
The book's evaluation methodology is particularly valuable. Each type of storage (directly attached, NAS and SAN) is covered in a chapter of its own. Within each chapter, the authors address specific technologies used to implement that type of storage. For example, the direct-attach chapter discusses such common storage technologies as SCSI and IDE, moderately exotic systems like USB and Firewire drives, and some more advanced solutions like HiPPI and SSA. Each technology is then placed in a matrix and scored in 11 different categories, including popularity and industry acceptance, built-in data protection features, typical fault tolerance and physical security characteristics.
The authors assign each rating on a scale of 1 (poor) to 5 (the best). This gives a good general indication of how each technology measures up, but they tend to rely on a straight average of the ratings when determining the best technology. Although it's true that the average allows you to make a quick ballpark comparison, there are many other factors to consider as well, such as the suitability for your particular environment and the way in which your users need to access their data. The matrixes are quite useful, but just remember that you can't always boil things down to a simple numerical score.
Probably the biggest problem with this book is that it's pretty dry. As a reference book, the writing style is fine, since it's easy to find what you're looking for, and the chapters are concise. It's difficult to read from cover-to-cover, though, which is a shame because that's what you should probably do the first time through. Take it in small doses, a chapter or so at a time, and you should be fine.
Storage Security is about just what you'd think: the security of your data as it's being stored on your server(s). It's not a detailed look at the configuration of any one product, but rather a comprehensive, theory-based approach to managing the security of your storage subsystem from evaluation to purchase to daily operations. If you manage a small or mid-size network, you may or may not need this book. If you have a larger network, though, or have significant data-storage needs, this deserves a space on your shelf.
You can purchase Storage Security: Protecting, SANs, NAS and DAS from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Duct tape your storage devices.
Protect Freedom!
Buy Tom Ridge Brand Duct Tape, it's minty fresh!
This is something I've wondered about, and this reminded me.
Is there any operating system that supports encrypting the storage at the file system level. In other words, is there any operating system where I can specify that I want a particular path encrypted, and then copy files over, edit files, etc without worrying about having to decrypt, recrypt manually all the time?
Even a weak encryption would satisfy me.
This is nothing new. Administrators and other have known for a long thime that no machine is secure if someone has access to the physical machine. If someone can open your box up, reboot it, attach new devices to its private subnet, etc. then it is not secure.
Why anyone thinks this should be different for storage systems is beyond me. If someone can break in and steal your data, or attach new devices to the data transfer channel, or whatever, then your data isn't secure. That the authors think this comes as a revelation to anyone means either they are really stupid or they think administrators are really stupid.
Get your machines installed in a location with good physical security. That's really all there is to it.
Why is this something you'd need a book for? It comes down to the basics.
One, never allow physical access to what you're trying to secure.
Two, _never_ allow physical access to what you're trying to secure.
Three and so on: log all security events, break users into groups for simplification of manageability, set permissions properly, protect network shares and device access, and be aware of the content that's being secured (what it is, how it's used, etc.)
Beyond that, there's not much else to consider. However, from the review it looks like they go beyond security issues to stuff like, "what hardware is best for my particular application." Sure, it's a big consideration. For example, you wouldn't want a two million row database running off a Network Appliance over NFS across switched fast ethernet, but there's enough free information out there that making decisions like that should be trivial. Furthermore, if you're doing system specifications w/o knowing about the technologies you have to choose from, I sure hope you're not an employee of the place for which you're building a system, because they're not going to like you very much when it dies on a regular basis.
Not having actually read the book, I may be way off base, but from the title and the review above, I don't see how it would be all that helpful except maybe as a primer to a junior-level engineer.
IEEE is working on a standard (IEEE P1619) which will allow encryption to shared media (SANs I guess). They've set up a working group.
They're looking at (from the website):
Something to look at in the future. Hopefully it'll be more secure than WEP. :)
MS products, in particular, like to create a large number of temp files and there is no way of configuring where they are kept. I'm not sure if OSS alternatives have this configuration ability.
And of course, you also have to worry about elements of documents in memory (which can be recovered).
I've had this similar thinking before, because the information in and of itself is not important, from a technical perspective, it's the mechanism to access that needs to be secure. Hence, a SAN with a fibre-channel fabric would seem secure (a client needs an HBA card), but hook it up to a MS File server, SQL Server, or Oracle, and suddenly all the same exploits apply.
;)
I would suggest it's not the type of nails used, it's the design of the front door. I could be wrong.
Peace, Out!
~Airrage
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
One particular memo was about the servicing of the water coolers, and went out to the whole company. When I strings'ed the memo, though, at the top was a draft of an employee's termination letter! Oops. Apparently, this was the undo buffer for Word -- the writer of the memo had just written the termination letter, printed it, deleted it from the document, and wrote the water cooler memo in the same instance of word. However, if opened this doc in Word, I couldn't access the hidden info, no matter what I tried.
Since then, I've always wondered how much other sensitive information has snuck out, via MS Word.
Keys are stored in smart cards. Reading backup tapes requires a Cyberntics drive and the correct key. Obviously you need to manage this very well to avoid being SOL during an actual recovery situation.
Of course, consider how vulnerable your backup media really is. I don't need to hack your network, just show up in an Iron Mountain uniform with forged ID maybe 30 minutes before the real Iron Mountain guy shows up. I then drive off with ALL you data.
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep