Making Backups Go Away

Every organization needs backups, but sometimes you want backups to go away:

Suppose you have a policy where certain types of personal records, like health records, have to be destroyed after a year. It’s very difficult to just delete something, because it may be on backup tapes."

Radia Perlman concisely defines the problem, and she has a simple solution, too. Incidentally, she adds, "It should be a law that with any vendor you could say, ‘Do not keep a permanent copy of my information in your database. Delete it after one month.’ I don’t want that stored — my name and address and credit card number — because it can be broken into." Perlman’s solution, in a nutshell: Encrypt the data, then, when you no longer want it around, throw away the key.

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Web Browser Diversity

As I give talks, I continue to find, to my continued surprise, that many people don’t know that there is any alternative to Internet Explorer (IE). The other day a webmaster of long acquaintance said something to the effect of:

Sure, I tailor my web pages for IE. What else would anybody use? And why would they?

(I usually attribute quotations or even paraphrases, but let’s let that one remain nameless.)

Why? Because IE draws security exploits like honey draws flies. Because it has deep design flaws. Because it is less capable than all the other major browsers. Because having a single browser used by 90% of desktop users is inherently unsafe, no matter what the browser is, because it is a monoculture, which means that there is a possibility that an exploit could attack a large proportion of all desktop machines all at the same time. This isn’t an academic concern, either, since there have been numerous IE exploits, including some, such as scob, for which there was no patch.

What else would they use?

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Broken Internet

James Seng posts a reminder that Dewayne Hendricks had noted an interview with David D. Clark in which Clark asserts that the Internet’s lack of built-in security has become an increasingly serious problem. Clark phrases it as a classic case of risk management:

…he observes that sometimes the worst disasters are caused not by sudden events but by slow, incremental processes — and that humans are good at ignoring problems. "Things get worse slowly. People adjust," Clark noted in his presentation. "The problem is assigning the correct degree of fear to distant elephants."
The Internet is Broken, David D. Clark, Monday, December 19, 2005 Technology Review

No tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean, no adequate levees in New Orleans, and no adequate built-in security in the Internet. Indeed, the distant elephants are upon us. Sometimes people can say they didn’t know, sometimes it’s hard to understand how those responsible couldn’t have known, and sometimes people just thought it was a distant enough problem that they didn’t need to deal with it yet. All these are ways that people don’t see the elephant. Denial, corruption, short-sightedness; whichever way, letting the elephants sneak up on you isn’t a good idea.

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Macs Become Even More Secure

Usually I don’t read slashdot, but today I found on it a note saying that Microsoft is to cease support for Internet Explorer on the Macintosh at the end of 2005. I must agree with the slashdot poster that Macs will thus become even more secure. Even if most Mac users already use other browsers, every little bit helps.

Not only will Macs become inherently more secure, because not as many people will be using them to run one of the most exploit-attracting pieces of software out there, but software diversity will thereby be increased, thus increasing security for everyone.

-jsq

Security as Brakes

Gunnar Peterson has an interesting analogy. Internet security is like brakes on a car. Good brakes let us drive faster. Good security lets us do more and faster.

Furthermore, building security in saves spending more time and effort later adding it on, just like you want brakes to come with the car, rather than having to drag your feet to stop it.

-jsq

Historical Externalities

While it may seem that in times of unusual external threats that it is necessary to take extroadinary measures to protect democracy, it’s also possible to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Today, when the White House lawyers seem preoccupied with contriving a way to stem the flow of possible lawsuits from former detainees, I strongly recommend that they think about another flood of suits, from the men and women in your armed services or the CIA agents who have been or will be engaged in CID practices. Our rich experience in Russia has shown that many will become alcoholics or drug addicts, violent criminals or, at the very least, despotic and abusive fathers and mothers.

Torture’s Long Shadow, By Vladimir Bukovsky Washington Post Sunday, December 18, 2005; Page B01

The above is an externality that I don’t recall seeing mentioned anywhere else. The writer has direct personal experience with this effect. There’s more.

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Welcome Back Typepad

As you may have heard, typepad, which hosts this and many other blogs, has been offline for several days. It seems they had a disk problem and had no live backups.

On the one hand, one can attribute this to the wildly growing popularity of blogs.

On the other, it looks like a classic case of everyone knowing that backups are essential, but actual practice lagging a big.

And one can note, as David Berlind does, that if blogs were kept in a standard open format it would be easy to move among blogging platforms.

Me, I have a new policy of exporting a backup of my entire blog every time I post something.

-jsq

P2P Traffic: How Much

How much of Internet traffic is P2P filesharing? If you believe CacheLogic, more than half. But is that correct?

Peter Sevcik in the November BCR Magazine points out that it would be good to have more than one source, especially when the source sells devices to measure such numbers. Peter also calls for government oversight and record keeping, at least as much as the FCC already does for voice. Continue reading →

Internet emergency reponse predicted

Here’s an interesting item in Jeff Pulver’s predictions for 2006:
8) Hurricanes such as Katrina and other natural disasters in the U.S. and around the world will compel the U.S. and other governments to look to the Internet and IP-based communications as the vehicle to improve emergency response and post-catastrophe communications.
2006 Predictions for IP Communications Industry: Coffee Talk with Jeff Pulver 6 December 2005

Considering the FCC has already announced a Homeland Security Bureau for this and related purposes, that prediction seems likely.

-jsq