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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?"
I am looking at an open source product for Windows, Mac, UNIX, as well as portable hard drives ...
I think you're going to find most people advising you to choose TrueCrypt which boasts:
I think they're on version 6.1a and I have been impressed with them. You may want to try benchmarking the various encryption algorithms it offers.
... but i am concerned about overhead and speed penalties.
Aren't we all. I mean, no one wants an Office Space like scenario where every day before you leave you have to wait for the damn little bar to cross the screen to save your progress for the day. You have another option which is to wait until the drive manufacturers build all that into the hardware's firmware so that it is as fast as they can make it.
... I also would feel very uneasy if someone assured me they had a method to do that. Drive encryption is one of those seemingly trivial but necessary reasons why companies have many system administrators and not some automagical solution.
I wouldn't recommend waiting that long, however.
Here's my formal suggestion: do a small test on a few users or even a few devices no one depends on, some USB drives, etc. Use them yourself and see what kind of overhead (for both user and device) we're talking about here. Then weigh that with how much comfort you get with universally encrypting everything. If A is greater than B (with a sinister sounding name like 'Dark Neuron' who knows?), draft up a plan. Otherwise, just wait until you have the funds to upgrade the hard drives to those with the built in encryption.
I do not know for certain but I do not believe there is a painless push-across-the-network way to do this
My work here is dung.
Let me explain to you how this works. In pictures:
http://xkcd.com/538/
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Don't do it.
A subtle balance between encrypting most essentials and leaving non-essentials unencrypted. For example, you may want to only encrypt parts of your hard disk as encrypting the whole disk will impact performance.
Also, watch how external USB keys are encrypted. if you deal with clients and offer loaner machines, their USB drives could become encrypted and useless when they return to their own office.
I'm all for encrypting, however hopefully the higher ups also consider the potential performance hits and liability issues.
"Security" that gets in people's way is a security threat, because people will find a way to work around it, and be worse off because of it. Never try to lock down everything, or you'll have no control over what is compromised. Figure out what you really need to secure, and lock that down. Really. Trying to secure everything is a sure sign that someone lacks the knowledge to make security decisions.
Encryption is easy. Password distribution and protection is hard.
Have you worked out a complete plan for key management for all these encrypted devices?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
unless of course your requirements call for it. But your systems will run very slow if every time they have to boot they have to go thru the decrypt process. you should only need to encrypt your users' data. Hopefully, system data and user data are, at least, in different folders of the filesystem.
What's your key management strategy?
You want TrueCrypt.
It's probably better than a hardware solution. They keep screwing up and snake-oiling the hardware ones, but you can audit TrueCrypt (and people have), and pre-boot authenticated system drive encryption is pretty much what you want.
As for speed... I don't know what you're worried about. AES-256-XTS (best-in-breed, the new standard, which TrueCrypt pioneered and uses) runs at over 150MB/sec in benchmark, and that's on one core. Your hard disk very probably doesn't run that fast.
All our machines are encrypted using similar means, and we've never experienced any problems with performance.
PGP's Whole Disk Encryption isn't as good - that kept stalling in kernel mode under XP, causing hiccups on lots of disk accesses; and eventually the driver bluescreened on every boot and there was absolutely no way we could get it back, which lost us terabytes of data... but TrueCrypt has caused us no such problems, and costs nothing. (If it worked with the leftover eTokens from our earlier PGP deployment, it'd be perfect.)
TrueCrypt does not support Pre-boot full disk encryption on the Mac. Only product I know of that does that right now is PGP Whole disk (latest version).
I see a lot of comments here suggesting that this is a bad idea, and to a certain extent it is, but chances are the institution has no say in this. After the wave of laptop thefts from government institutions, the office of inspector general requires all laptops (and portable media) be encrypted. A lot of agencies have stalled on this one. I've been involved in supporting laptops that are encrypted and go out to remote field cables (as remote as it gets). It's pain, but if you have to do it, TrueCrypt is not the way to go. You need something that ties into AD and something that can manage thousands of users. PGP Desktop.
Tim Smith - Ramblings from Nerd Land
I see this all the time and it always makes me cringe.
If you treat all data the same, it is impossible to convince users to treat any data differently from any other, and they will all default to "Sloppy", and you won't care because you'll be certain that the encryption is going to save your ass.
It is a much much better idea to have a very distinct line between secure and insecure, so that people have that distinction hammered into their heads every time they touch secure data. Otherwise, someone is going to get sloppy with their private key, and you're going to get exploited and never see it coming.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I was screaming PGP until I got to the Open source part, removing funding from the equation Truecrypt is the only thing that will really do what your asking for. Its not bad & I like it, but its not PGP. And if you have been using something since the BBS days, your really not likely to change now so I am bias towards it. But from my limited (3 month) run with Truecrypt I had no problems and it was very stable, and little to no real performance difference from PGP's.
That comic has been making the rounds. It's cute, but not applicable.
If the submitter is in an organization with thousands of machines, the notion that any user will be required to keep their password confidential in the face of torture is laughable. That's for specially trained operatives, soldiers, and other assorted heroes. Those of us in the normal world will probably adopt a more rationale perspective. If someone were crazy enough to steal one of our laptops, simultaneously snatch the user, and threaten them with torture, our folks know to give up all passwords, immediately. We're only required to keep data confidential where it is reasonable to do so. When floods sweep away your car, wave goodbye to your laptop in the trunk. When someone threatens you physically, tell 'em what they want to hear.
Our people are more important than our data. Our people are more important than the publics data. If we lose a chunk of data, we have ways to reconstruct what was lost and mitigate damage. If we lose an employee, there is no way to achieve a good outcome.
Reasonable?
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
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!
OK, delay and stall as much as possible while you get your resume shopped around and get a new job lined up.
Then quit.
This kind of silliness is (a)stupid, (b)pointless, and (c)doomed. Anyone who claims otherwise is wrong. (And no, I'm not opinionated at all! :-)
Fundamentally, this will fail because it's a blanket policy on dissimilar environments: All hardware is not equal, and all software is not equal. Portable gear should NOT be treated the same as fixed equipment. Sensitive customer data should NOT be treated the same as OS files. Throwing everything together under one usage policy comes from not understanding ANY of computers, data, or security.
Get out. Run while you can!
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
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.
I see this directive a lot. It boils down to "We don't know where our sensitive data is, or don't trust our employees to keep it where it should be, so we're encrypting everything!".
Most of the time when I see this, it's because the person making the directive is responsible for security in some manner but has no experience with risk management and mitigation, so they go for the "all out, definitely safe!" shotgun solution. The problem is there's no such thing!
What risks are you actually attempting to mitigate through encrypting everything, and are you aware of the risks you are creating? These are questions the person who made the directive should be able to answer! For instance, if you are trying to mitigate the "PII/Lost Laptop" risk, why not implement drive encryption on laptops only, and buy USB sticks (such as Ironkey) which guarantee the encryption? If you're trying to stop a malicious insider, no amount of encryption will save you if they've been given the key.
Finally as others suggested, what's your key management and password management strategy? I -love- truecrypt but I wouldn't suggest it for a whole enterprise without being able to answer the question "How do I recover the key to this workstation when the employee dies unexpectedly of a heart attack?".
Best of luck in your endeavor but remember this rule: When it comes to implementing security, NEVER BE AFRAID TO ASK MORE QUESTIONS - especially about requirements.
I've used these products for a long time. (There are others; look around.) I suggest you phase 'em in over the next three years, by which time you'll have replaced everything. After all, you already have a budget for replacing all hardware over the next few years, right? Beyond that, remote, enterprise-quality tools for managing this hardware can be *very* pricey add-ons, but if you build your work processes right, there may be little or no need for them.
That just leaves writing to CDs/DVDs. There are open-source packages such as TrueCrypt. If you're already running WinZip, it'll do the same for removable media, allowing your users to set a specific password for that write then sneakernet the disk wherever it needs to go. If you want to force all writes to optical media to be encrypted, you'll need to look at something like GuardianEdge Removable for a commercial app or something inventive if you must go open-source.
One last thought: If your data is so important, so valuable, or so legally regulated that you must encrypt *everything*, then you have the money to go open-source, commercial, or whatever works. I see no justification in the submitted question for limiting the choice to open-source software. If you *have* to do this, you *have* to do it right, no matter the cost. If your big guys say they can't afford the cost, then they don't *have* to do it.
I second the opinion of the first poster who recommended you wait, for several reasons.
First, most methods of encryption are a pain in the butt. If you want to encrypt only some data, then yes I would say Truecrypt. But then it has to be manually un-encrypted before use.
If you want to encrypt whole drives, your network, everything, and have it work transparently, you are in for a headache combined with a nightmare. Headache because getting it set up and working is a major project fraught with problems. Nightmare because you will lose whole drives worth of data when something goes wrong, unless you have a very serious, robust, and reliable backup scheme that you use often.
However, drive manufacturers will be coming out soon with new drives that incorporate DES encryption via hardware. This eliminates the delays and problems with software encryption, and will go a very long way toward making whole-network encryption a lot more practical.
The best encryption/security is most easily foiled by humans:
1. I've seen many username/passwords posted with sticky notes on folks' monitors. Admins are partially to blame by imposing well intentioned, but impractical password rules, resulting in the necessity of users to write that crap down or end up perpetually calling the already overextended IT help desk and being shutdown for hours at a shot to figure out passwords.
2. I've seen combos to classified safes written in pencil behind the "Locked"/"Open" magnetic sticker (well, the digits were swapped, but c'mon!).
3. I've had numerous combos given to me for vaults and safes containing secret level materials that ALL followed a retardly simple pattern, making an 8 digit combo lock (4 two digit numbers) effectively a 2 digit one (XY-YX-XY-00). While convenient, it is stupid, and possibly illegal (not sure how the DOD feels about security folks intentionally dumbing down the security they mandate?).
4. I've had to have our uncleared maintenance dude break into the vault when our crap lock broke AGAIN. Acoustic ceiling tiles really should not be the last line of defense for secret files... We regularly had problems with the combo lock on that door as well, a modest shove would open it, on those occasions it actually latched.
5. I've had the security chick for a vault blow me off after I carefully explained how the combo lock on the vault was busted. It took two more attempts, and several days to get someone else to demand it get fixed (she and I had a mutual dislike, I wonder why...). If someone just entered the vault you could turn the knob and get in without the combo, the lock was not properly resetting.
6. I've seen vaults left with only the cheesy punch code combo lock securing things (nobody in the vault) for hours at a shot on weekends, while the dude responsible was off at an extended lunch. This was SOP. Prior jobs demanded vaults always either have a cleared and authorized individual for that vault inside, or that the real locks be spun. Even for bathroom breaks.
Good looking security with lax culture is worse than weak security with a vigilant user base.
Any sufficiently enterprisey encryption system would have a site-wide "master key" entrusted to whatever IT staff is responsible for rescuing people from forgetting their key.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Truecrypt is fast. I have it on all my computers and backup devices that handle sensitive information, and there is zero slowdown visible to the user, even for IO-intensive operations. Steve Gibson from the "security now" podcast did his own benchmark where he created a drive image and timed how long it took to defrag the drive, then restored the bits from the image, encrypted with TC, then timed the defrag again. He then repeated the process three times because he didnt believe the results -- the encrypted filesystem ran FASTER. Take the anecdote for what it is, but the principle seems to hold true in my experience too. TrueCrypt is damn fast. It chews a few % of your CPU time when in use, but it doesnt slow things down.
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
I work in an organization with 10,000+ field offices in the USA. Every office has an encrypted server and POS machine. Then, there are several hundred more encrypted laptops used by the various levels of management from district all the way to division. Also, several (over a hundred) laptops at out headquarters are also encrypted.
The problem is that every one of these must be managed. Each password must be logged and then stored. Each one must be changed every year (right after the annual reviews - hire and fire). Everyone who may reboot the computer must know the password (although you can interact with some programs and pass the password to it before a reboot so the user does not need to know). You cannot install it and think your done. You have just created another point of failure that will generate calls to the helpdesk and add to your total IT overhead via management.
Also, we have had some problems with certain machines not reporting 100% encryption even after weeks of waiting. A full reimage was needed to correct the issue. Just one more piece to watch for - you will have to closely manager the encryption process.
I've used both truecrypt and compusec, and for a corporate environment only compusec is acceptable. Truecrypt does not provide a master password you can use to quickly reset a password when the user forgets. Compusec is not perfect, but this single feature makes it "enterprise" ready.
Hard drive encryption isn't meant to protect against social engineering attacks. It's meant to protect against attacks that don't require social engineering, like stealing or cloning a database server's drives for the information. More than anything, it's meant to provide reasonable assurance that if one of your employees' computers gets stolen by a common thief who just wants to sell it for the cash value, somebody else down the line won't be able to read the data in the drive and take advantage of it.
Are you adequate?
Encryption and a whole host of other requirements are now the law in California for any non-profit, local gov or other agency using state funds and that has any personal data anywhere on their systems. This could be something as innocent as the address block in a letter you typed to one person, does not have to mean the "database."
http://www.documents.dgs.ca.gov/osp/sam/mmemos/MM08_11.pdf
The procedure for handling keys and data at rest is important. If you are worried about users forgetting their passwords, then use key tokens (USB memory sticks). This will work if the machine and the stick are not kept in the same bag. In other words, have the users clip the sticks to their key chains.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Given how glacially slow IT moves in a university -- and how much buy-in the prima donnas demand for even the slightest decisions -- I'm sure the password topic is still brought up at the weekly meeting.
Security only works if the convenience/security ratio is balanced properly for the environment at hand. At a public university which is used to openness, the "encrypt everything" just wouldn't fly (because that one tenured prof who likes to share and then remote mount his entire C: drive between his office and home over an unencrypted network connection would pitch a fit and kill that plan by fiat). If you work at a security company or bank or the NSA, then I'd suspect you'd have an easier time of it.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
We have been doing quite a bit of testing with many platforms - TrueCrypt, LoopAES, etc and we have seen huge performance drop-offs when it came to RAID performance. Unencrypted 5 Disk RAID0, we were able to get Writes 235 MB/s Reads 370 MB/s Whenever we try anything encrypted, TrueCrypt 6.1a - the best we get is ~100MB/s. Where do those superior benchmarking numbers that everyone talks about come from? Both OpenSSL & Truecrypt claim around 400MB/s - has anyone else been able to do this quickly?
"My institution has thousands of computers, and is looking at starting an IT policy to encrypt everything"
You're looking at a world of potential support pain. Lost passwords, lost unrecoverable files...
For those advocating Truecrypt, my understanding is that it lacks the enterprise deployment and management tools of something like PGP.
You're talking about a fundamental change in your IT landscape, with significant implications for implementation & support cost. Get help.
My company has been running all the machines that aren't at our data center encrypted, starting around August of 2007. On my laptop I honestly just have not noticed the overhead of encryption more than once or twice in that time. When I started it was on a 1.8GHz Pentium M box, so it's even less of a concern with my 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo.
As I said, it's worked out so well that it's now the standard setup on our laptops. The Eee's my wife and I got last week are running encrypted partitions as well.
Before I started, I was worried about the overhead of the encryption, but I was really worried for no reason. I've almost never noticed it, and none of the other folks in my organization complain about it either.
We are using the Linux encryption stuff running under LVM, so our swap is encrypted as well. Everything but /boot is encrypted. We are using "cryptsetup" (dm_crypt) (built into the Ubuntu Hardy and up "alt" installer and Fedora 10 and up). I'd recommend that for the Linux side.
I've heard good things about TruCrypt, but haven't used it. We don't use Windows or Mac, so the stuff that's built into Linux is our preference.
The dm_crypt stuff includes "LUKS", which allows you to have multiple keys for accessing the data. So you'd probably want to set up a "user key" and "company key" for each system, and if the user forgets their key someone can check out the company key and set a new user key.
So, in that way you don't need to worry about the user forgetting their password.
Also, you still need to have good backups of the file-systems, so if someone does forget their data you can at worst case recover from the most recent backup.
So the worry of losing keys is a no-op. If you don't have good backups, check out backuppc. I've been very impressed with it.
Finally, as far as the other poster saying that it's a "shotgun" approach for people who are too lazy to identify their important data... Do you also try to back up only your most important data? What if someone adds a new important data?
I started with only encrypting a part of the system (because full system encryption was difficult to achieve in older Linux releases). The problem is with leakage. As with backups, it's more provably correct to cover more data rather than less.
This is why for backups I only do exclusions instead of listing the data I want to back up. That way if more data gets added, I have to explicitly exclude it for it not to be backed up.
The same thing applies to crypto. Ok, so you encrypt your sensitive data. Do you have updatedb running? Or beagle? If someone looks at the "locate" database of all the files on your system, will that expose something you didn't want exposed? Like the list of your clients? It would for ours, because our document repository has useful file-names. Similar for the beagle database.
What are you leaking that you didn't intend to be?
Just encrypt the whole damn thing.
Sean
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As much as I like TrueCrypt, it is not what you want to be using when you have thousands of computers.
TrueCrypt has no way to remotely install or manage its self. It means taking a trip to each and every computer you own and installing it by hand.
Sadly one of the commercial solutions in this case will save many a headache.
Something like Checkpoints Pointsec (or what ever they are calling it this month) or PGP WDE for your computers and give everyone IronKeys which can be centrally managed (Pointsec will also encrypt USB keys as well as allow you to control what USB devices are plugged in).
And no I'm not a Checkpoint shill...
What are you trying to protect?
From what? What attacks? What value does it have to the attacker? What value does the secret hold to you? Who are the attackers?
For example if the value of the secret is low to you, then spending money on protecting it is a waste. Encryption costs to buy, costs to run, costs to manage keys, costs in convenience. eg. (Most secrets aren't worth a trip across town because you forgot your keys once)
If the attackers are internal, (they usually are), then encryption buys you nothing.
If the value of the secret is large and the attackers have physical access, then encryption is the strongest link in a very weak chain.
If many people have access to the secret, then social engineering will weasel it out no matter what your encryption.
If the attackers are evil and powerful, then encryption is a red flag to very Bad Bulls. You better off with more primitive methods that require real humans to eye ball it.
Get these questions lined up and answered before you start.
eyeballs and fingers aren't that hard to remove
Fingerprints are even easier:
- Get a print on something.
- "Develop" it to get a computer image of the print.
- Fabricate a fake finger from the image any of several ways.
One example:
- Etch it into a printed circuit board (using a printer and a Radio Shack grade PC board etching kit.)
- Cast a fake fingertip on the printed circuit. (Gelatin works for a few-shot prosthetic fingerpint. I think silicon caulk works too if you first lightly oil the PC board to keep it from sticking. Etc.)
Should be similarly easy to make a fake for a retinal scanner from a retinal scan, which is strictly an optic device. (I'd start with a disposable camera for the holder.) Ditto iris scan.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If you don't ever want to discover that your data is inaccessible, you have to think about whether or not you'll let individual users set any encryption passwords, and how to make sure there's always more than one person who knows any given encryption passwords, and whether or not you'll let all the people who may know a given password get on the same airplane. Because if someone forgets, gets hit by a bus, gets pissed off at the company, etc., you may just find some data just became inaccessible...
Ok, so I guess it's pointless to argue the point of "Why encrypt 'everything'?" There are options out there, but I think you're going to be creating an incredible hit on productivity in the institution and a massive support nightmare depending on the size of your site. Also, keep in mind that you will need to establish a tiered encryption system and master keys that will open everything in every department and agency at the highest administrative level of the organization. There will also have to be new physical security practices to make sure the keys don't get into the wild, as well as a rotating scheme for replacing all the keys on a regular basis and updating all masters.
Look, I have been on both sides of this argument and know that there are things that you haven't even thought about from the business practices and risk management angles that will have a tremendous set of REAL costs that are beyond the performance overhead on the computing side of things. This is a horribly bad idea! The Pentagon, CIA and DHS don't encrypt everything for a good reason!
Yes we encrypt every device(With the exception of PC's). We have not implemented the insert=forced encrypt yet because there are certain software products that use usb dongles that would be encrypted by that policy and they have not worked that out yet. Cameras are a pain and our work requires we use them they are the few times we get viruses although that is not an encryption issue.
/a devices /q /e /rm
/.'rs I can see why you might want to encrypt everything. If your building security is not super tight or just not possible. You have to weigh the possiblity of theft of equiptment against how sensitive your data is.
We don't use an open source product except TruCrypt on some of my own portable HDD's. I am pushing that more so we don't have to buy licenses for every piece of hardware. Automation (see below) is a step in that direction. My experiences may still help.
First where I do use TruCrypt I set up a batch file that opens a simple prompt so the user just enters a password and the drive becomes accessible. The batch file and the TrueCrypt executable both reside on a small unencrypted partition on the drive in question with an autorun.inf file pointing to the batch file. To automatically mount any encrypted volume it sees on the disk you just inserted it goes something like this:
TrueCrypt\TrueCrypt
Second we use Encryption Plus Hard Disk for our laptops. PC's are not encrypted we invested in a controlled access security system instead of purchasing licenses for all PC's although unlike other
Like TrueCrypt our software loads a driver that encrypts and decrypts everything written to the HDD. As you probably know computers aren't always writing to the HDD. So the idea that you'll take a huge performance hit is kind of a misnomer. We have laptops that range from Pentium III's to the latest cpu's. If the laptop is excruciatingly slow to begin with then encrypting the HDD will only make it slightly more excruciating. If the cpu is more current then the user will not notice the difference.
Yes people loose passwords and forget the challenge questions. Unfortunately here we don't have a good procedure in place to reset them remotely. We have them bring them in and we enter the admin password. Even if the HDD crashes we can pop in the decryption CD and get their data about 50% of the time. Which is not all that far off from the recovery achieved from our unencrypted PC's after HDD crashes.
In conclusion having imaged and encrypted hundreds of PC's I would say unless you choose the wrong algorithm don't worry to much about performance issues. The most basic algorithms will stop 99% of common thief's from getting at your data. Of course if your worried about the uncommon ones you may have to weigh protection verses performance.
"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget." -Thomas Szasz
My company has been encrypting everything for some time. We have used Truecrypt with no issues for around 1.5 years I believe. Our linux machines are all encrypted. It's easy to implement with Fedora 9+ and Ubuntu 8.10 alternate installer as Anaconda handles it for you. I also have several encrypted RAID arrays. If you want pm me for a write up on it. I don't want my site getting slashdotted ;) . I'll be happy to give you my how-tos'
Just remember, nothing is 100% secure. Document everything.
As far as performance is concerned. We have noticed no significant impact from disk encryption. Let all the naysayers whine and say I'm full of it. TOP reports that our encryption from cryptsetup consumes about 5% of our procs on our older IBM celerons 2ghz, that's while writing to an array. The array (mdadm) consumes about another 5 %. It consumes around the same on a single core of our new machines. Our new machines, i.e. Core2Duo 2.2's, Xeon Quads 2.13's and an AMD dual core 2.2 you don't even notice it.
Frankly it's so easy to encrypt a system drive these days I am of the mind you are foolish not to do so.
The only downside I have come across with system encryption is that I can't do remote reboots. There is a way around it I've read but it's not really an issue for us. Message me if you want, or can. I never have pm'd anyone here before.
We have many of the same problems where I work in government. I am not sure how the posters work is organized, but I know at least mine seems ass backwards at times. Its a problem of control and responsibility.
I assume at the corporate level they manage our servers and centralized data holdings in a secure fashion with encryption. This also includes some items like individual email stored centrally.
However where I work, everything on your personal computer, which everyone has, is the responsibility of your program, and ultimately the individual to back up.
So in this lunacy you have in some cases triple protected, rotating passwords on systems, yet next to the box is a USB drive that is unsecured, that contains all the data on said system. In a word, stupid.
Part of the problem is the rotating passwords. If you do backup you have to do it manually as when your password changes it will break Microsoft's "Scheduled Tasks" (which requires a password, and it is hardcoded). Centrally they really don't seem to care, as it "is not their problem", that is the users responsibility.
So people being people, and busy at that, most do not back up regularly, and none I know encrypt. Though part of the problem being also that no policy exists that I know of about encryption, which to use, what is acceptable, etc... Franking I don't see IT wanting to create devices they themselves cannot crack as well, which means some kind of backdoor.
Anyway any advice as to product (I hear TrueCrypt mentioned a lot), or a solution to the automation process that doesn't involve A)Super User Privs, or B)Not having pssword changes, as I don't think IT would ever go for either of those. I have looked around online but I have yet to find anything that easily solves this problem. Also changing to Linux is also not an option.. :) I have to work with what I have!
laptops and desktops, sure, but I'd be a bit hesitant about doing this on application servers until I was absolutely sure it wasn't going to cause a nasty performance hit. Furthermore, make sure you've got a very, very good backup strategy first.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
It seems to me that the main problem with recent stupid leaks of large amounts of information from stolen laptops was not so much that the laptop was unsecured, but that the data had no place being on the laptop anyway.
Especially now that you can reach a good network from almost anywhere in the USA, even while traveling along the road. Being able to work on real data from a social security database while flying on an airplane is simply not a reasonable thing to ask.
Can you not start with a core to your network that includes all the encryption you want and then push outwards as you need to.
Maybe set-up a central server or two that users can VPN into using a thin client. Prohibit wholesale copying of data (sure, they can take a screenshot and paste it into powerpoint, or write some information down off of the screen, but forbid file downloads.
Then, for some of your employees, give them a locked-down environment on their PC that has greater access permissions.
The point being, for many users, thin client may suffice and its much easier to protect. And for those for whom it just won't do, you can spend some more time and education on getting them a solution they can work with and make them aware that by and large sensitive data does not belong on a mobile device.
It's not as if you are going to really encrypt everything anyway - you want people to be able to read printouts !
I imagine that you just want to secure data at rest on your central servers and data on the move between the servers and the clients, except in a very few specific cases.
Nullius in verba
You can use drugs and a wrench on a few people. You can't do it to a couple hundred million people. When someone drugs you and hits you with a wrench, you know it happened. Try it on a massive scale and the public will find out and grab wrenches of their own.
That is why hard-to-crack encryption is still incredibly useful. It allows you to deny the enemy the option of attacking undetected.
And that just happens to be a very credible threat. Massive passive surveillance used to be a paranoid imagination by crypto-nerds, but now it's something we've been hearing about in the mainstream news over the last 3 years.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Read the source and compile it for yourself if you don't trust it. Asshole.
.sig: No such file or directory