How To, When You Have To Encrypt Absolutely Everything? 468
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?"
TrueCrypt or Wait for On Drive Upgrades (Score:5, Informative)
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 [truecrypt.org] which boasts:
I think they're on version 6.1a and I have been impressed with them. You may want to try benchmarking [truecrypt.org] 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 [slashdot.org] 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
TrueCrypt (Score:5, Insightful)
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.)
Re:TrueCrypt (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:TrueCrypt (Score:5, Informative)
Nobody deals with that, for the moment. I don't think the hardware solutions deal with that for every case, either.
I've heard of some possible solutions being thrown out there - including a CPU "disabled cache"-type software solutions - but there's nothing being sold yet.
Re:TrueCrypt (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:TrueCrypt (Score:4, Insightful)
Is the common approach simply to pop up a password-protected screensaver?
You should be doing that anyway. Defence in depth and all that.
Everyone seems to hail TrueCrypt (or any other full disk encryption) as the second coming but, like any other security mechanism, it should not be your only. So yes, pop up a password-protected screen saver - a cooler feature would be if TrueCrypt "hooked" into said screen saver and destroyed keys/dismounted volumes on two or three false passwords.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
He means overwrite the keys in memory, not trash the hard drive. So that a reboot will be necessary, which will then prompt for the password. It really should be done.
Truecrypt can dismount regular drives on screensaver launch. I don't think it can dismount the system drive though.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No data is lost, he just has to log in again. Big deal. How is that anymore annoying than someone walking to someone else's PC and logging them out, or shutting the computer off?
And whether or not data is lost, if this sort of thing is happening if your office, I think there are worse problems. I mean, you might as well say "What if I walk down to Cubicle #3, and throw his computer out the window?" Is that a hardware flaw?
Re:TrueCrypt (Score:5, Informative)
TrueCrypt has several options. The way I have it configured, the TC volume is automatically unmounted when I suspend, and I need to re-mount it when the notebook wakes back.
I understand the password is not in RAM anymore after a suspend. These are the options I use:
"SaveVolumeHistory" = 0
"CachePasswords" = 0
"WipePasswordCacheOnExit" = 1
"WipeCacheOnAutoDismount" = 1
"StartOnLogon" = 0
"MountDevicesOnLogon" = 0
"MountFavoritesOnLogon" = 0
"DismountOnLogOff" = 1
"DismountOnPowerSaving" = 1
"DismountOnScreenSaver" = 0
"ForceAutoDismount" = 1
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In case of a lost laptop with encryption there is something else to worry about: the strength of your passwords and the resilience against brute-forcing it.
Rate limiters don't work. Destroy after xxx passwords also not. The attacker has the source of TrueCrypt just like you, and thus can remove that kind of limits and brute-force your password. It's almost certainly easier than brute-forcing your encryption key directly. I don't think your password is as long as your encryption key is.
Losing your laptop w
Re:TrueCrypt (Score:4, Informative)
You are misunderstanding the problem. Defending data in a datacenter is a completely different problem that data-at-rest encryption really doesn't help you with.
In most states, whenever a client computer could contain personally-identifying data, data breaches must be exposed to any potential victim and the general public.
In some cases, that includes things like browser caches, and other temporary files. So most financial institutions and government agencies opt to encrypt all mobile devices. Some law enforcement agencies encrypt desktop computers as well.
Encryption is very easy to do. Key management is hard. Truecrypt is great for an individual user, but falls down when you have to manage a non-trivial number of clients.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What regulators are looking for is an encryption solution whose algorithms have been certified to conform to FIPS 140-2. In general, you should only deploy encryption products in modes that are FIPS 140-2 certified.
The "Common Criteria" EAL levels are more of a measure of the overall quality of a product's security implementation. Typically a full-disk encryption app is certified at EAL level 3 or 4.
If you're using EAL as a decision making point, make sure that you understand how the assurance level was imp
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Read the source and compile it for yourself if you don't trust it. Asshole.
Re:TrueCrypt or Wait for On Drive Upgrades (Score:5, Informative)
Re:TrueCrypt or Wait for On Drive Upgrades (Score:5, Insightful)
6.1a won't even install on my Inspiron 9400, giving me a "memory parity error" on the initial reboot test for full drive encryption.
Have you run memtest86+ [memtest.org] and let it go for at least two full tests? Could be one of your sticks is bad.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
memtest86 may be the "hello world" of stress tests, it's true.
I'd like to spew my first slashdot car analogy:
If you run memtest, it might be said that you're doing the equivalent of kicking the tires of your vehicle. However... If the wheels fall off when you kick them, it's a good indication you need new ones. It may not be an "uber stress test" but it is a good way to give it a once-over, doesn't require one to even know what "compile" means, let alone wanting to generate md5 sums to "really thrash your R
Re:TrueCrypt or Wait for On Drive Upgrades (Score:5, Informative)
The post you reply to is written by a numbskull. Compiling software doesn't even begin to ensure that all possible memory locations accessed and bit values are written. The vast majority of what is going on during a compile and/or md5 sum is going to happen in the processor's L1 & L2 caches.
On the other hand memtest86(+) has a methodology that includes disabling cache and ensures that all possible locations are written to and read from. Additionally there is a mixture of patterns used, from random patterns for general testing to specific patterns (both bit value & access ordering) for exercising known failure modes of DRAM.
Finally the idea that you can "stress" you RAM is nuts. Outside of running the device out of spec (e.g. overclocking), the only "stress" possible is heat and just being on will get it into the normal operating temperatures. Anything else is what it's designed to do, there is no ubermagic access pattern driven by that "well known" gcc that causes DRAM to fall over dead.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It will error out initially when it can't find a way to pull logs, but now it runs on most systems. Haven't tried it on nvidia boards yet.
Nice thing about it is that it activates all the cpus/cores you have so it makes memory testing that much faster.
Sigh, I wish dell would release the source.
Re:TrueCrypt or Wait for On Drive Upgrades (Score:5, Interesting)
In addition, the TrueCrypt user community lately is getting the shaft from the "TrueCrypt Foundation".
Case in point, if you visit their forums, starting about 6 months ago, around the time of release of v6, the forum administrators now delete anything "critical" of TrueCrypt. Basically, your only allowed to discuss the positives of the software, or problems with the intended operation of it. Any "bugs" or "weaknesses" mentioned result in having the thread either locked, more than likely deleted, and if you push an issue, open a second thread on a 'deleted thread' your likely to have your account locked.
5.1a was the last version released before this new policy of "only positives". Not to mention that the forums are already so heavily locked down (No public email addresses to register accounts, no private messages on the board, no threads that are not 'on topic'). Some of us tried (semi-successfully) to have frequent contributors meet over on Wilder's Security forums. (http://www.wilderssecurity.com/) Difficult though since they started deleting our postings since they weren't on topic, and private messages are impossible.
Sadly, as a result of this, I used to heavily endorse TrueCrypt, but I can no longer stand behind them until they let the community get re-involved, for the good and the bad.
Re:TrueCrypt or Wait for On Drive Upgrades (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, and as the OP was asking for "real-life" benchmarks, here they are. Tom's Hardware benchmarked TrueCrypt thoroughly and found practically no overhead.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/truecrypt-security-hdd,2125.html [tomshardware.com]
TrueCrypt is very fast (Score:4, Informative)
Re:TrueCrypt or Wait for On Drive Upgrades (Score:4, Informative)
We use truecrypt for full drive encryption. So far we have encrypted well over 100 notebooks without issue. The full drive encryption has very little overhead and besides a password at start up most users don't even notice.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
TrueCrypt can't do full-drive encryption on OS X.
You have to go commercial for that.
What are you trying to protect and from what? (Score:3, Interesting)
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, (t
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I work at a University with a Hospital attached to it:
What are you trying to protect?
Most likely personal identifiable information or personal health information. Could be anything from student records to social security numbers. Protected under state law and HIPAA.
From what? What attacks? What value does it have to the attacker? What value does the secret hold to you? Who are the attackers?
Most likely from loss or theft. The value of that information is 99% zero but our dear government has requested that a
Re:TrueCrypt or Wait for On Drive Upgrades (Score:4, Insightful)
When people check data out though, it has to get stored somewhere. That somewhere might be a local disk, or a USB stick, etc. So those places need to be encrypted if you want to protect against lost/theft.
Your server can be sufficiently protected (physically and virtually) that it does not need the drives encrypted - encryption does not protect against over-the-wire attacks anyways. While it is probably unreasonable to protect EVERY pc from being stolen, it is not unreasonable to protect servers from being stolen - eg, an alarm that goes off way before anyone gets near the server room. 24/7 guards, if you can afford it, etc.
Re:TrueCrypt or Wait for On Drive Upgrades (Score:5, Informative)
You can encrypt your key with a password (I'm sure truecrypt supports this) but then you might as well just have used a password in the first place instead of encryption.
WTF? If someone steals a computer and puts a drive in another computer the windows/BIOS password won't do shit, encryption will.
What you do is store sensitive material on secure servers and have people check out copies of material that they have access to. I'm sure keeping sensitive data off local hard drives would be easier than actually protecting all those hard drives.
No it won't. If they need to use the data then it will be cached on their computer whether it is stored centrally or not. And if they weren't using the data then it wouldn't have been on the computer to begin with. Centralization will only help if you move from thick-client to a thin-client-like processing of data. That will limit the amount of distribution of sensitive manner - "checking data out" won't.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Believe or not that method has a name.
Its called "rubber hose cryptanalysis": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_hose_cryptanalysis [wikipedia.org]
Re:TrueCrypt or Wait for On Drive Upgrades (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not so sure about that. The deal with whole disk encryption is that it's fail-safe; it doesn't matter if something bad happens, the data is stored in a secure state by default. A check-out model doesn't give you that.
Also, speaking from experience, it's incredibly difficult to get end users to even understand what sensitive data is, much less train them how to work with it in a secure manner. Any security model that relies upon educated (and diligent) users is probably going to fail sooner rather than later.
Re:TrueCrypt or Wait for On Drive Upgrades (Score:5, Funny)
Coming from an Org that encrypts everything
Tom Cruise? Is that you?
Re:TrueCrypt or Wait for On Drive Upgrades (Score:5, Informative)
If the pagefile is located on the encrypted volume, not much harm, might make cryptanalysis easier if someone can get two images of your drive at different times.
If the pagefile is not on the encrypted volume, then it is leaving chunks of no-longer-secure data for anyone to see.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
TrueCrypt in an enterprise? Hahaha!
What happens when somebody loses their password or keyfile? Or you get an subpoena for a laptop or usb key's content?
There are these things you may have heard of, once or twice, but probably don't use based on your comment.
They're called 'backups'. You know, the things you use if somebody drops the laptop while the disk is in use and the heads remove the surface of the platters, or the drive decides it just doesn't want to spin up anymore, or any number of situations.
Re:TrueCrypt or Wait for On Drive Upgrades (Score:5, Informative)
A simple perusal of their website reveals:
Q: We use TrueCrypt in a corporate/enterprise environment. Is there a way for an administrator to reset a volume password or pre-boot authentication password when a user forgets it (or loses a keyfile)?
A: Yes. Note that there is no "back door" implemented in TrueCrypt. However, there is a way to "reset" volume passwords/keyfiles and pre-boot authentication passwords. After you create a volume, back up its header to a file (select Tools -> Backup Volume Header) before you allow a non-admin user to use the volume. Note that the volume header (which is encrypted with a header key derived from a password/keyfile) contains the master key with which the volume is encrypted. Then ask the user to choose a password, and set it for him/her (Volumes -> Change Volume Password); or generate a user keyfile for him/her. Then you can allow the user to use the volume and to change the password/keyfiles without your assistance/permission. In case he/she forgets his/her password or loses his/her keyfile, you can "reset" the volume password/keyfiles to your original admin password/keyfiles by restoring the volume header from the backup file (Tools -> Restore Volume Header).
Similarly, you can reset a pre-boot authentication password. To create a backup of the master key data (that will be stored on a TrueCrypt Rescue Disk and encrypted with your administrator password), select 'System' > 'Create Rescue Disk'. To set a user pre-boot authentication password, select 'System' > 'Change Password'. To restore your administrator password, boot the TrueCrypt Rescue Disk, select 'Repair Options' > 'Restore key data' and enter your administrator password. /noisocheck).
Note: It is not required to burn each TrueCrypt Rescue Disk ISO image to a CD/DVD. You can maintain a central repository of ISO images for all workstations (rather than a repository of CDs/DVDs). For more information see the section Command Line Usage (option
Seriously, a little research isn't hard.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
We wrote our own tool for storing passwords and the recovery isos. Our users are not administrators so they can't change the passwords on their own.
It made it all very easy to deal with.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I'm complaining that TrueCrypt doesn't include a scalable mechanism for escrowing private keys in an organization.
I can deploy a FIPS-compliant, secure encryption solution from McAfee, Pointsec, PGP, WinMagic, and others, and still meet my legal and fiduciary responsibilities.
Hard Drive Encryption - Theory vs. Reality (Score:4, Funny)
Let me explain to you how this works. In pictures:
http://xkcd.com/538/ [xkcd.com]
Re:Hard Drive Encryption - Theory vs. Reality (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, if you're using Truecrypt, they won't know when to stop hitting you.
Re:Hard Drive Encryption - Theory vs. Reality (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh. Well THAT sounds like a plus.
Re:Hard Drive Encryption - Theory vs. Reality (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah...
Encryption will save your and your institution versus legal attacks, but if others' "people" may talk to your "people" with a wrench, then only iron will can save you.
Even biometrics can be fooled (e.g., eyeballs and fingers aren't that hard to remove these days).
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
eyeballs and fingers aren't that hard to remove these days
These days? Bodily mutilation is like the GEICO of injury - so easy, a caveman could do it.
Fingerprints are even easier that removing fingers (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Try replacing your eyeball, once I've made a functional duplicate, and published the design online.
Theory vs. Reality - Seriously (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Theory vs. Reality - Seriously (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you.
Many more years ago than I'd care to discuss, I used to pull graveyards at the local 7-11. Corporate and Franchise policy back then was, that if you were robbed, you gave up the entire store, on the theory that you were more valuable than the cash or store contents.
I know it was probably a CYA to avoid lawsuits from clerks, but it was still a sensible and sane policy.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
OK! OK! Just leave the dog out of it!
The big secret, I mean the one they really keep under wraps to try to keep the nuclear genie in the bottle... Is that plutonium and uranium are delicious. Really, really good - Here in Los Alamos we sprinkle highly enriched uranium on our corn-flakes in the morning - It's a great wake-me-up. Devouring large quantities of uranium (even un-enriched) and then 'processing' it internally is how the slugs are manufactured for gun-type weapons (the enrichment is done in th
You're still missing the point. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The point of the comic is that there's no *practical* difference between, say, 128-bit encryption and 4096-bit encryption because it is, and always will be, easier to just obtain the password somehow than to crack the encryption.
Meanwhile, crypto-nerds go around scoffing at your primitive WPA wifi encryption and go on to introduce 47 new layers of encryption, all bigger and better than the last, wasting tons of time and money in the process.
That message still applies, despite everything in your post.
Re:Theory vs. Reality - Seriously (Score:5, Informative)
There's a huge difference. When you see numbers like "128-bit," you're dealing with a symmetric encryption algorithm (e.g., AES). When you see numbers like "4096-bit," you're dealing with an asymmetric algorithm (e.g., RSA).
See the NIST Recommendation for Key Management (PDF) [nist.gov], page 63. For example, to get RSA that is "equivalently" secure (for some predicted meaning of equivalent) to AES-128, you need a 3072-bit key. The table is explained on page 62.
As an aside, the comparably small key sizes that asymmetric elliptic curve cryptograph (ECC) can use, illustrated on page 63, are one of the reasons that ECC is so valuable.
I love xkcd, but Munroe missed a HUGE case (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:Hard Drive Encryption - Theory vs. Reality (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Let me explain to you how this works, with a story link [slashdot.org].
Companies are storing more, and more, and more, and more, and more information. About their customers, about their suppliers, about themselves, about employees, about employees friends, about customers friends, about customers employees, etc , etc, etc. It's like a Panopticon Party, and everyone with a datacentre is invited. With hard disc space costs plummeting, processor power rising, and networked recorders becoming ubiquitous, companies and managers everywhere have succumbed to the data deluge, and have meticulously stored and categorized every last bit they can lay their hands on. (For what purpose is a question for another day).
The result. Exabytes of data sitting idle on servers, unencrypted, waiting to to stolen. Predictably it is, usually with nothing more than a USB key, or USB hard disc. The people who pay for such illicit data presumably want it all for something. If the data was even encrypted in the most basic fashion, most of the constant data breaches we here about would never have occurred.
Companies have two options. First, stop gathering and storing this data. That will never happen. Most compaines are data junkies by this point. Secondly; Encrypt, Everything. Everything. Any unencrypted portion of your network is a data breach waiting to happen. Even the slightest crack is a PR disaster waiting to happen. I don't care if its a telnet client on a headless offline BSD system, sitting in a securely locked room in the basement. Someone WILL find a way to lose data using it.
I applaud the submitters goal. It is a worthy one, and is likely the only real thing standing between your credit card number and a fraudsters ebay login page. More power to them.
Expect it to be slow (Score:2)
SAIC used encryption on all of their Windows laptops. There was a huge speed penalty in startup time and starting applications.
Yeah... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Interesting)
you may want to only encrypt parts of your hard disk as encrypting the whole disk will impact performance.
Yeah, but if you're running Windows, be sure to get the swap file (depending on security concerns, maybe having Win zero the swap file at shutdown might be enough) and all that crap in Documents and Settings. If concerns run to file/folder names, don't forget the MRU lists. I do have a Truecrypt partition, but regularly find bits and pieces of stuff scattered here and there on C: unencrypted.
Win does not segregate data in a helpful fashion. If my security concerns were serious, I wouldn't dare anything less than whole disk encryption. Actually, I'd probably stop using Windows.
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Interesting)
How about the following...
"My presentation is on this drive and I forgot the password, get my files for me!"
users dont like it when you say, " sorry, but unless you remember your password all your files on that drive are gone forever."
That stopped it at my last IT gig, I mentioned that response to the CTO and he said...
"oooh, Did not think of that. let's skip encryption."
Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Interesting)
If it's corporate, just make them encrypt it using their key and a corporate master key. Then you can decrypt it using the master key if some boneheaded user loses their key. You should do this anyway to prevent some user from walking with all of their data, and to maintain SoX compliance.
Obviously this will increase the overhead, but frankly, encryption should be used sparingly anyway.
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Informative)
I can't tell, are you joking? With all the sarcasm around Slashdot it's sometimes difficult to tell if someone is being snarky.
The scenario you mention wouldn't happen unless a half-baked encryption scheme was used. HP, RSA, IBM, and even Truecrypt all have recovery options ranging in levels of difficulty to implement. RSA's key management tools are quite handy but you definitely pay a premium for them. HP's are clunky like all HP software, IBM has been doing it for years but again you pay and arm and a leg.
With Truecrypt you create two to three thumbdrives when you do the initial encryption, two of them store the master encryption key and the third has whatever key is needed for authentication depending on how you want to deploy it. The only fault I have with Truecrypt is that there are a dozen ways to deploy it so you have to read and plan very carefully before deploying it on any level.
Once you have your flash disk you copy its contents to an encrypted folder on your SAN somewhere and keep the flash drive in a properly fire-proof safe. One flash drive has the keys for over a hundred machines with room for plenty more, keeping two copies ensures that a flash drive dying won't leave your data inaccessible during transport to the server and should the SAN experience some sort of data loss you can go back to the flash drive to recover keys.
Encryption is pretty scary as your keys are extremely important as you mention, once the key is lost then so is the data. So you take a few precautions ahead of time and then you don't need to worry.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There is still a password to use the flash key. You would never expect an end-user to end a 1024bit key themselves after-all. It's not near as bad as you make it out to be especially since there are multiple authentication techniques which you can perform.
You are correct in that there are a lot of logistics that have to get worked out before such a system can be deployed. Probably why I've spent a year testing different scenarios and how to handle recovery. I'm finally looking at deploying it company wide
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
users dont like it when you say, " sorry, but unless you remember your password all your files on that drive are gone forever."
That stopped it at my last IT gig, I mentioned that response to the CTO and he said...
"oooh, Did not think of that. let's skip encryption."
There's exactly two WTFs here, you and the CTO. We have full disk encryption, but there's a support procedure to identify and get a password reset code. And if all else fails, IT has an extra master login to decode the disk. I don't know what truecrypt has but even a cursory look at the available products would have told you that. No sane business would ever work so that if an employee got run over by the bus, everything that person has been doing is gone forever.
Dont. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I've seen this, too (Score:4, Interesting)
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
password (Score:2, Insightful)
Encryption is easy. Password distribution and protection is hard.
Key Management (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you worked out a complete plan for key management for all these encrypted devices?
Re:Key Management (Score:5, Funny)
Pointsec (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Truecrypt ? Maybe (Score:2)
don't encrypt system files (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
You'd be surprised. Modern CPUs can decrypt a file as fast as the disk can retrieve it. Even encrypting your swap imposes negligible performance penalties.
Key Management? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's your key management strategy?
Re:Key Management? (Score:5, Funny)
To empower individuals to utilize synergistic approaches to achieve goals and exceed expectations. :)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
*patents*
TrueCrypt and Mac (Score:4, Informative)
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).
Re: (Score:2)
They probably have to (Score:3, Informative)
Just don't do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Truecrypt, your our only hope (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Here we use PGP Desktop (Score:2)
Full Disk Encryption and of course encrypting our USB keys, backup DVDs, etc. Central key management, recovery, pretty well thought out.
I dunno if the 'free' version does all this. It's not as clever as TruCrypt, but it works.
ROT 26 (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:ROT 26 (Score:4, Funny)
I suggest obfuscating it slightly, pardon the 'irregularities' of my math
ROT-26 Swap 2*13 for 26.
ROT-(2*13) Swap Triskadeca for 13
ROT-(2*Triskadeca) Swap Duplo for 2*
ROT-Duplotriskadeca Add Duplotriskadeca to both sides
ROT = Duplotriskadeca Eliminate
0 = Dupliskadeca Let d = 4; add 1 to each side
1 + 0 = Dupliska(4 + 1)eca = Dupliskaeeca Reorder
1 = cakeisadupel We know that l looks like 1, so go ahead and eliminate.
0 = cake is a dupe
The cake statement is a false, a lie!
Hence we can call this DoublePortal encryption, while knowing we maintained mathematical purity for the name.
Use of this naming convention for ROT(26) will surely be more amenable to the PHBs.
"I don't know where my sensitive data is!" (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
For a simpler life, start with hardware (Score:3, Insightful)
I've used these products [eclypt.com] 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.
Wait... don't do it now. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Procedure is important (Score:3, Interesting)
Get professional help - now (Score:3, Interesting)
"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.
Don't worry about performance. (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Think CAREFULLY about how you handle passwds (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, I guess "Why?" is late... (Score:3, Interesting)
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!
"Concerned about overhead and speed penalties" (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Disk encryption, is easy and well worth it. (Score:3, Informative)
We have same problems... (Score:3, Interesting)
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!
Servers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Thin client (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Have fun with management (Score:5, Funny)
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!
PLAESE BACK UP FRIST!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
5. I've had the security chick for a vault blow me
Nice.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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.
That's not true. Restoring access to a container or partition with a forgotten password is quite easy if you do one extra step when creating the container. From their FAQ:
Q: We use TrueCrypt in a corporate/enterprise environment. Is there a way for an administrator to reset a volume password or pre-boot authentication password when a user forgets it (or loses a keyfile)?
A: Yes. Note that there is no "back door" implemented in TrueCrypt. However, there is a way to "reset" volume passwords/keyfiles and pre-boot authentication passwords. After you create a volume, back up its header to a file (select Tools -> Backup Volume Header) before you allow a non-admin user to use the volume. Note that the volume header (which is encrypted with a header key derived from a password/keyfile) contains the master key with which the volume is encrypted. Then ask the user to choose a password, and set it for him/her (Volumes -> Change Volume Password); or generate a user keyfile for him/her. Then you can allow the user to use the volume and to change the password/keyfiles without your assistance/permission. In case he/she forgets his/her password or loses his/her keyfile, you can "reset" the volume password/keyfiles to your original admin password/keyfiles by restoring the volume header from the backup file (Tools -> Restore Volume Header).
Similarly, you can reset a pre-boot authentication password. To create a backup of the master key data (that will be stored on a TrueCrypt Rescue Disk and encrypted with your administrator password), select 'System' > 'Create Rescue Disk'. To set a user pre-boot authentication password, select 'System' > 'Change Password'. To restore your administrator password, boot the TrueCrypt Rescue Disk, select 'Repair Options' > 'Restore key data' and enter your administrator password. /noisocheck).
Note: It is not required to burn each TrueCrypt Rescue Disk ISO image to a CD/DVD. You can maintain a central repository of ISO images for all workstations (rather than a repository of CDs/DVDs). For more information see the section Command Line Usage (option
The actual FAQ has many of those terms linked to other help files for more info: http://www.truecrypt.org/faq.php [truecrypt.org]
They don't mention it explicitly, but this process does not require any computation/decryption on the actual data. It will be very fast to execute no matter how large the container is.