Tag: Star Trek

“Mr. Coca Cola” -or- Hackers never sleep: Protecting Data at rest

Data at rest is stored data that isn’t currently being used or transferred.

For instance, at the Coca Cola factory: when Mr. Coca Cola sends all the “cola artists” (I’m assuming he calls them that) home for the evening, the secret recipe won’t be needed for at least another 8 hours.

Mr. Ebenezer Coca-Cola (artist’s rendering)

So of course, he just takes the piece of paper with the secret recipe on it, and sticks it to his personal office vending machine with a refrigerator magnet, and heads home to watch “Fired Up,” right? Wrong!

First, “Fired Up” went off the air years ago, lasted only two seasons, only aired briefly in syndication and is not available on Netflix. Not even star Sharon Lawrence has any copies. It’s gone gone.

Second, Mr. Coca Cola needs the secret recipe to remain a secret. During the day, he can personally add the ingredients for Coca Cola to the giant mixing vat located in earthquake-proof bedrock five miles below the factory floor. But at night. At night he needs to store the recipe safely, while it is Data at rest. That’s because a) it’s always night somewhere b) hackers never sleep.

So what he really does is quite simple: he encrypts the file that contains the recipe. Only Mr. Coca Cola and the President of the United States know the password to decrypt it. The recipe is safe until tomorrow morning.

The end.

Next time…protecting Data in motion.

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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.