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New State Laws Could Make Encryption Widespread
New laws that took effect in Nevada on Oct. 1 and will kick in on Jan. 1 in Massachusetts may effectively mandate encryption for companies' hard drives, portable devices, and data transmissions. The laws will be binding on any organization that maintains personal information about residents of the two states. (Washington and Michigan are considering similar legislation.) Nevada's law deals mostly with transmitted information and Massachusetts's emphasizes stored information. Between them the two laws should put more of a dent into lax security practices than widespread laws requiring customer notification of data breaches have done. (Such laws are on the books in 40 states and by one estimate have reduced identity theft by 2%.) Here are a couple of legal takes on the impact of the new laws.
Forcing idiots to encrypt sensitive files will ...
force idiots to encrypt files (not the ones they should encrypt, obviously) using the password "password" ...
and
lose half the data, believing they encrypted it
and
send the data to half their family, especially anyone claiming to be a hacker, with the subject line "can you tell me the password for this file", who'll put it online on wikileaks (who'll happily -and proudly- publish extremely private information on anyone they don't like, laws and privacy be damned)
Well at least, when the honeymoon's over and it's time for Barack O. to publish his email correspondance he can claim to have "encrypted it" and then send a random string, telling the judge the password has something to do with a very dark hole where apparently many claim the sun does not shine.
How interesting and ironic that not that long ago (1991) possessing encryption tools was considered as munitions!
It used to be that Philip Zimmermann was getting hassled for his creation of PGP.
Boy we've come a long way. Check out the Wikipedia entry on PGP if you can
but clueless users will write the password on a post it note, and probably burn a plaintext CD copy to leave lying around.
Government agencies will be worse.
I'm not surprised it has made so little difference.
As we know, technical solutions are rarely enough to protect data. Human processes and policies can be much more important.
Personally I prefer the UK approach, the Data Protection Act. No doubt it is flawed, and sadly not enforced as rigorously as it should be, but the concept is better. Rather than mandate specific technological approaches, it imposes a set of general requirements on any organisation that holds personal data:
The DPA is one of the few generally excellent pieces of legislation in the UK. It's just a shame that the Information Commisioner's Office that enforces it isn't as active as it could be. But it gives you quite a bit of power to take on companies yourself.
Paul Leader
Why do I have a sneaking suspicion that specific software will be endorsed and/or required to meet this new requirement? Probably whichever one spends the most money to "demonstrate" its capabilities to the lawmakers by treating them all to free vacations in the Bahamas. How much do you want to bet that a free solution like Truecrypt just won't meet the "standards" set by this new law?
End of lesson. You may press the button.
As many people in the election on both sides has stated There are a lot of small business out there, more that do not focus on IT in general. Excessive restrictions and regulations are just as bad as none. You can't hold the hands of every company. You need to let them mess up from time to time. Encrytion is a good thing however forcing it isn't even for companies. As many of the small business are an employee of one and it is their own personal PC.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It amuses me to see how government always wants to have its cake and eat it too. I agree that widespread use of strong encryption and good security practices is of great benefit to society, but some Senator or law enforcement agency is bound to complain that their ability to wiretap or access encrypted data is being compromised by these better private security measures. Strong encryption and good security are two edged swords, they help us and they help our enemies as well, there is no way around that. Personally, I don't have a problem with that. I would rather live in a society were encryption is used, privacy is paramount, and some criminals and evil doers are a bit harder to catch, not a bad trade-off IMHO. However, there will doubtless be howls of indignation from the law enforcement community, which contains more than its fair share of self-righteous authoritarian pricks, about how criminals are getting away with crimes and going unpunished. I suppose that my response to them would be to make better use of the tools and laws that we already have instead of depending upon ever more egregious invasions of our collective personal privacy and abridgements of our Constitutional rights merely to prevent some drug addict from getting his fix or some high school students from posting pictures of themselves on MySpace or Facebook.
Just because a state mandates something, does not mean it automatically happens. Look at speeding, look at drug laws, look at overtime rules for P/T and F/T employees, look at many other unenforced business regulations.
This stuff is like when a judge ordered a server's RAM chips removed and stored as evidence, as they were a 'data storage device'. Government typically sucks at anything like this.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Yes, it is. The answer is to create penalties for losing personal data just like there could be penalties for losing my car at a mechanic's shop. The answer is not to force every mechanic to build a bank vault around his parking lot, and it is stupid to think that this will do anything except a) make nearly every business a "criminal" with spotty, whimsical enforcement or b) shut things down and so be repealed el fasto
In a word: Yes.
Making laws to tell them exactly what to do is stupid. What if there's a better way, and encryption isn't needed? They still have to do the encryption now.
Other posts have been more reasonable: Harsher penalties for failing to protect the data.
It might even be different if this was a 100% fix. It's not. Now the thief just needs 1 more step, instead. The password/key. Even without it, it's not impossible to crack encryption. It's just very hard, if done right. (And next to useless if done wrong.)
So yes, the 'nannystate' tag is accurate.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Encrypting something isn't instantaneous, especially if new software has to be researched, bought, and installed. In addition, you're paying 2 employees for the time the system is getting the software installed. This goes for laptops, pc, servers, etc. The downtime for servers is also going to cost money in its own ways.
If you think dealing with encryption won't waste $50/mo of each employees productivity, you're mistaken. Plus the passwords thing you mentioned... That could do it on average, too.
No, I think the estimates are low, if anything.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
As long as the restrictions are reasonably commonsense, I don't think small businesses should be exempt. In the end it doesn't matter if my personal information ends up on the black market via a small business or a large business with lax security, either way I'm screwed.
Simple solutions that would solve 95% of the data leaks (especially the big ones):
1. Never store customer data on machines that must travel outside of the company. 2. Regardless of #1, all laptops have full disk encryption where possible, and extra safeguards (could be a sticker on the top that says NO PERSONAL DATA) against storing such data on those machines otherwise.
Getting people to practice proper database security is harder, and may not be practical to legislate. I'm not sure. Still, the vast majority of publicized personal information thefts have been the result of stolen laptops with personal information left unencrypted. It is simply not acceptable to carry around unencrypted personal data like that, no matter how small your company is, not with effective and cheap disk encryptors available.
I read the internet for the articles.
>Also I could see huge problems later on when the only IT guy who knows the key is fired, hit by the obligatory train, or quits.
If you're covered by the credit card industry's Data Security Standard, you're already required to use encryption and you're required to use it competently, with a key management infrastructure.
Corporate crypto deployments have been using some form of key escrow for many years. Availability is as much part of security as confidentiality is.
You can't hold the hands of every company. You need to let them mess up from time to time. Encrytion is a good thing however forcing it isn't even for companies.
Lead reduction is a good thing however forcing it isn't even for companies.
Proper document shredding is a good thing however forcing it isn't even for companies.
Proper hazardous waste disposal is a good thing however forcing it isn't even for companies.
There are a lot of things that are inconvenient that we, as a society, have decided that our citizens must do. In each of the above cases, including yours, the regulations exist to enforce real, tangible protections. These aren't hypothetical problems that only give legislators something to gripe about, but actual problems that would otherwise directly affect other parties.
As many of the small business are an employee of one and it is their own personal PC.
Install TrueCrypt and be done with it. This isn't something for a small business to panic over.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Any lawyers reading want to comment on Massachusetts's attempt to impose this regulation on any business (even one without a presence in Massachusetts) storing information about Massachusetts residents? My take on this is that they are WAY overstepping the boundaries of what state laws can do, but IANAL.
If you think dealing with encryption won't waste $50/mo of each employees productivity, you're mistaken.
My work laptop has full-disc encryption. The only time I notice is when it asks for a boot password or when I have to change the password every couple months. This is completely negligible compared to, say, the time to boot Windows and open all the horribly bloated (and network-aware, so they also take time to connect to the server) applications I have to use.
No amount of fines in the world will get my personal data back. Once it's out there, it cannot be retracted. At least if the mechanic loses my car I can sue and use the money to invest in a new car. No one can use the car to impersonate me or make copies of the car to allow others to do the same. The car is just an object. It way have sentimental value, but I can ultimately live without that particular car. Personal data breaches, however, can adversely affect people for life. Data can be copied and distributed infinitely, and a lot of the time it can't be as easily replaced or changed. Trying to sue the company for a breach when that won't stop the data from spreading is about as effective as the RIAA/MPAA's prosecution of those who leak music/movies.
Encryption is good for protecting trade secrets, but useless for protecting social security numbers. Thieves who want to steal credit card or social security numbers can choose from tens of thousands of possible targets, at least one of which will be insecure. We need to stop pretending that social security numbers are useful as identification or authentication, because using an SSN to identify yourself requires disclosing it. We need to switch to a system of public-key cryptography, and put the blame for identity theft where it belongs: on the banks, who somehow decided that a few readily-discoverable numbers and a few easily-forged documents were all that's needed to take a loan in your name.