Tag: 3 States of Data

Encryption: “♫ Doo-dot, deeyowwww, da-doo-daaa! ♫”

That’s what James Bond sings to himself as he walks down the street, or skis down a bobsled run as he’s being chased by henchman on motorcycles with ridiculous spikes on their tires. Unless he’s listening to Astley.

Singing to himself in the face of mortal danger: that kind of confidence comes from years of training and discipline, and the knowledge that all of his secret spy files are safely encrypted.

Now you can enjoy that same level of confidence when you need to keep information safe. It’s called encryption, and it’s pretty simple to use, with a free program called 7-zip. If you want to learn how to do it, watch the slideshow below. You can come back here any time to get a refresher:

Which of these actors only played James Bond in one film?

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Cranium Control Panel: Protecting “Data in Use”

Sensitive data is arguably at its most vulnerable to hackers and looky-loos  when it is in use by someone who needs to work with it to do their job.

data-in-use
“Aha! I see the problem. You got some water weed in your floatatronic propeller extrapolator!”

To work with encrypted data, you need to take it out of it’s encrypted “vault.” While it’s in that decrypted state, it is easier to steal or alter.

Here are a few simple things you can do when you’re working with sensitive information to help keep the data secure:

  1. If possible, save a version of the data that doesn’t contain the sensitive information, and work with that. If you only need to count the number of records, or do some other work with the data that doesn’t involve the sensitive portion of the info, you can, say, remove the sensitive columns of a spreadsheet and do a “save as…” of the file.
  2. Re-encrypt the data as soon as you’re done working with it. Don’t leave sensitive in an unencrypted form when you’re not using it.
  3. Lock your computer when you’re away from it.
    1. Mac: ctrl-shift-eject
    2. PC: lock

 

What is a way to protect data in use?

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Next time: Protecting Data at rest.

data-at-rest-ha-ha

IT Pop Quiz – Are you Treksperienced? -or- The Three States of Data

A very simple quiz:

Q: In your job, do you deal with other people’s Personally Identifiable Information?

Q: Are you a Star Trek fan?

A: If you answered, “yes,” to one of these, this post is relevant to you. Read on!

This is a quick explanation of the “three states of data,” that are important to consider when protecting Personally Identifiable Information:

  1. Data in use
  2. Data at rest
  3. Data in motion

data-in-use

Data in use:
Data in use is data that is currently being worked on by an employee to do their job (usually on a computer, but could also be a printout of the data, etc.)

 

data-at-rest-ha-ha

Data at rest:
Data at rest is stored data that is not currently being used.

 

 

1998 Brent Spiner stars in the new movie "Star Trek: Insurrection."Data in motion:
Data in motion is data sent over networks, like an internal network, or the Internet.

 

 

Why should you care? Different states require different handling. For instance, Data at rest can be encrypted to keep it safe from prying eyes and hackers. Data in use is by definition unencrypted: you have to decrypt it to work with it. That potentially makes the data more vulnerable, and different measures need to be taken to ensure its security.

Data in motion also needs special consideration. You could encrypt a file before sending it to someone over email, but how do you get the decryption key to them? If you send that over plain email, you’ve defeated your own security.

The next post will cover some key ways to handle Data in use.