I initially wanted to write today's blog about Disk Encryption and Pre-Boot Authentication but quickly realized that I would never get it published today due to my preperations to be in Galveston this weekend and Detroit all of next week. So, I will just hit on a point that is beginning to ring louder and louder for many organizations. All information is becoming electronic. Yea, everyone know that. However, it's not just that more devices are now mobile and have the capability of carrying more information, but it is also the fact that more information now resides in an electronic format than ever before. As Richard Moulds points out in his article today, everything from gambling machines to new projectors in movie theaters deal only with digital information.
What's the security spin? Before we started storing all of our documentation in digital media, someone needed physical access to the information in order to aquire it. I couldn't steal a document off of your desk at your job in Chicago unless I was in Chicago and was able to get into your office. Now we live in a world where we have more means of accessing more data.
That is a pretty good thing unless you are worried about a global catastrophe wiping out most of the knowledge accumalated in the last thirty years. Of course, the most likely source of problems associated with this migration from physical information is the same as its greatest benefit: its accessability.
Granted, we may not care that our personal information is so readily available as our society evolves. Once we are able to make some form of bio-metric authentication ubiquitous throughout our work and personal life, perhaps we will feel more comfortable that anyone accessing our data will have the proper authority to do so. Then again, we may feel even more exposed than ever before.
The main point that I want to make here is: we will have more data available to more people than ever before and that without encryption we will have less control than at any point in history. Organizations that have sensitive data that they need to protect will have to rely more and more on technology security and the people behind it, as analog information slowly fades away.
Michael Mongold
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