Re: Mobile Data - Protecting the University from unnecessary risk

[Valdis Kletnieks <Valdis.Kletnieks () VT EDU>]

On Mon, 10 May 2010 21:53:07 EDT, randy marchany said:

> 2. This is significant in that as long as the system is booted up,
> your files are encrypted UNTIL they are accessed by a userid or
> process owned by a userid that has READ access to the files in
> question. World read access allows any userid to decrypt the file. A
> process running under your userid's privileges can decrypt any file
> you have read access and any malware running under your userid has
> that same access.

Something that Randy implies, but a fair number of people need to be hit
over the head with repeatedly till they get it:

2a) Full Disk Encryption is only really useful when defending against some
miscreant who has wandered off with your computer *while it's powered off*
under his arm, taken it back to their den of iniquity, and powered it on and
said "OK, now what?". This is a very real and valid threat model for a laptop
or small desktop, but probably not your ERP system, which is probably hardly
ever powered down, and probably won't fit under a miscreant's arm without
the assistance of a forklift.

And yet, I've heard more than one tale of a misguided security person
insisting that FDE be installed on the ERP system - resulting in the loss
of 1 or 2 nines of reliability because at the next reboot, it did exactly
what FDE will make it do - sit there and not mount the disk till it gets
fed the magic word.  Whoops.

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