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TN BlueCross Encrypts All Data After 57 Disks Stolen
Lucas123 writes "After dozens of hard disk drives were stolen from a leased facility in Chattanooga, potentially exposing the personal data of more than 1 million customers, BlueCross decided to go the safe route: they spent $6 million to encrypt all stored data across their enterprise. The health insurer spent the past year encrypting nearly a petabyte of data on 1,000 Windows, AIX, SQL, VMware and Xen server hard drives; 6,000 workstations and removable media drives; as well as 136,000 tape backup volumes."
Most insurance companies these days, are far more concerned with getting bonuses to the executives.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It is a pity that the data was stolen before adequate protection was put into place, but it seems to me TN BCBS took the right steps afterwards:
1. They sent out alerts to those affected, both current and former members
2. They now encrypt all their stored data
Of course, this will not prevent all possible leaks, but at least it shows they are taking protection of their customers' data seriously, and have put in serious work to protect that data. I wish more organizations did that. Way to go, BCBS of Tennessee!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
"I know I already shit on the floor, but I'm wearing a diaper now so it's all good!"
where is badanalogyguy?
so you're saying that one mistake (data loss; floor shitting) will render every countermeasure (encryption; diapering) invalid? nah, I don't think so. The insurance company handled the data loss quite competent - they disclosed it early (afaik) and implemented a regime that will make future data losses much harder.
I don't think the barn door saying means what you think it does. It suggests pointless action taken after the event. The original data was stolen but encryption to hinder future theft of data seems sensible.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
I wouldn't take the $6M and 5000 man hours as directly coupled. The actual press release says:
BlueCross invested more than $6 million and 5,000 man-hours in the data encryption effort, which included:
- 885 Terabytes of mass data storage
- 1,000 Windows, AIX, SQL, VMWare and Xen server hard drives
- 6,000 workstation hard drives and removable media drives
- 25,000 voice call recordings per day
- 136,000 volumes of backup tape
The 5000 man hours may only reflect actual labor and not reflect all the hours of planning/scheduling etc. What ever hourly rate for labor double it for overhead, the cost of a person is about twice their salary, at $100/hour that's $1M in labor. Another 500K in planning. I have no clue what software they used but I'm pretty certain it wasn't a single package. Each system may well have required a different package + licenses + contractor time from the vendor. For example they may have had to out source the voice call recordings to who ever provides their phone system. I kind of doubt they slap all the recordings onto a single box and mass encrypt.
They're a very distributed organization so there's going to be a *lot* of duplication of effort, they may have had to do the phone bit at hundreds of sites.
I don't know if it could have been done for $3M or if $6M actually represents a relatively reasonable price compared to a lot of the $XXX Mllion dollar utter failure projects. It strikes me as fairly reasonable considering the scope of the problem and usefulness of the result (assuming it's not a $6M whitewash).
jryy vg jbhyq unir orra svefg cbfg vs vg jrera'g sbe rapelcgvba bireurnq.
How is disk corruption less repairable when you encrypt?
The lost-passwords problem is already well-solved for decent systems.
"When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl."
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
"Good luck, I'm behind SEVEN ROT13s!"
demonstrably incorrect.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
What is ironic that any enterprise tool has encryption built in if it was made in recent times:
The EMC devices have Powerpath encryption for LUNs. Someone hacks the SAN, nothing available on the server other than trashing the LUNs.
IBM storage arrays check if they can boot off a key server, and then unlock their encrypted drives in hardware. If this isn't enabled, AIX has EFS (different from Windows's EFS) to ensure that only the user with the right key can attach a directory.
Linux has so many tools, there is a supported solution somewhere. LUKS, TrueCrypt, EncFS, gpg, various userlevel tools accessed via FUSE, PGP, etc.
Windows has plenty of tools. BitLocker, EFS, third party tools like PGP, TrueCrypt, and document level tools like LockLizard or Microsoft's IRM.
Backup programs can encrypt data to tape using hardware encryption and SPIN/SPOUT SCSI commands, or the backup client can deduplicate on its end and send encrypted stuff up, so the backup server is not the weakest link.
Applications can encrypt on a table basis in almost all RDBMS programs. Store the value and a nonce as a salt. This way, even if a table had repeating values, an attacker couldn't discern what repeated and what didn't.
Everything supports two-factor authentication, so even though RSA Security may have had issues, having a token and a password is better than nothing. If someone doesn't want SecurID, there are plenty of other two factor products, such as VASCO's stuff they OEM to Blizzard, SOE, and eBay.
The encryption tools are there, and likely sitting around ready to be configured. It will take some time making a recovery scenario, because key management can be hairy, but if done right, encryption will be pretty much set and forget.