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How To, When You Have To Encrypt Absolutely Everything?
Dark Neuron writes "My institution has thousands of computers, and is looking at starting an IT policy to encrypt everything, all hard drives, including desktops, laptops, external hard drives, USB flash drives, etc. I am looking at an open source product for Windows, Mac, UNIX, as well as portable hard drives, but I am concerned about overhead and speed penalties. Does anyone have experience and/or advice with encrypting every single device in a similar situation?"
Let me explain to you how this works. In pictures:
http://xkcd.com/538/
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Tell the suits you are implementing state-of-the art ROT-26 encryption on everything. Take a month off. Come back, pronounce it complete, and ask for a raise.
SpyDock: Scientific Python in a Docker container
An elaborate system of Post It Notes (All ROT13'd)
Maybe its just the corporate environment that I'm in and please I would love to be wrong. But from what I can tell a good number of open sourced products just don't scale up to the enterprise level.
There aren't any tools that manage them centrally and allow for compliance and auditing.
Crap. Has anyone told Google yet? Best get them to switch to Windows quickly!
To empower individuals to utilize synergistic approaches to achieve goals and exceed expectations. :)
All keys are '12345'
But I encrypted it and lost the keys.
It was a perfect design and I am sad to have lost it.
Plase back everything up frist! Send it to us at editor@wikileaks.org and we'll store that data for you for free. We have mirror sites to protect the data; just send it before encrypting it.
Coming from an Org that encrypts everything
Tom Cruise? Is that you?
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
The outrageous cost is offensive, but you need to pay to pay in an enterprise environment right now.
Steve Ballmer? Is that you?
5. I've had the security chick for a vault blow me
Nice.
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*patents*
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
This is a perfect example of an IT directive to solve a problem that does not exist. Encrypting at the drive level can be useful if your key management is good, but it is not meant to be a catch-all for security. Your best bet is to only encrypt the data that absolutely needs to be. As someone mentioned above, use a thin-client model to keep the complexity low. Use an e-mail client that supports encryption if you must, though e-mail is generally not a safe place for anything secure anyway. Make sure your intranet keeps the browser from caching secure data, and train your staff to store top-secret information on an encrypted document server.
I understand that there is sometimes a need to be paranoid about a stolen laptop, but the XKCD strip linked above is dead on when it comes to what this sort of "security" actually provides. At best it is obscurity. At worst, it slows everyone's life down, bogs down IT support and operations, and chews up funds that would be better used for something like salaries.
Personally, I think we should move away from the dedicated machine model for all employees. It's much less expensive to secure your intranet servers and expose them through secure tunnels through the internet. Now, all your employees need is an abacus with a good battery.
dl;kjf9s00, so*9fosdikjk oi*5 soej1j2+~. 7dtTk34l ";Leu3*7&.
#@$tjke,
s-=3k,3j
No, that was Rod Blagojevich.
"Nobody shoots anybody in the face unless you're a hit man or a video gamer"- Jack Thompson
It would never work anyway, all our employees are fitted with a hollow tooth full of cyanide to cover such contingencies.
P.S. Just lost Joe from HR... he had an accident while eating a brazil nut.
BM3
OK! OK! Just leave the dog out of it!
The big secret, I mean the one they really keep under wraps to try to keep the nuclear genie in the bottle... Is that plutonium and uranium are delicious. Really, really good - Here in Los Alamos we sprinkle highly enriched uranium on our corn-flakes in the morning - It's a great wake-me-up. Devouring large quantities of uranium (even un-enriched) and then 'processing' it internally is how the slugs are manufactured for gun-type weapons (the enrichment is done in the small intestine). Making an implosion weapon necessitates a circus elephant.
So, now that you know, feel free to go improvise a couple of nukes, just leave the dog alone!
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.