February 2008 - Issue No. 11  

Should I or should I not encrypt my data? Things you should consider: 

You may be a lawyer, an accountant or just someone wondering if you need to encrypt your data. Many people believe that encrypting their data will protect their PC, server or laptop. Unfortunately this may not always be the case. If you use an easy-to-guess password or leave your encrypted device close by, anyone can easily access your information.

If you are working with a document that is stored in encrypted mode, you must keep in mind that while you are using it, it's unencrypted, so you better not leave that laptop open while you are having a cup of coffee. When doing backups, copies of your data can be destroyed, so please be sure any method of encryption you use will not interfere with your backup software.

If for some reason you lose your data and need to recover it, ensure you have a copy of the software that allows you to decrypt your data, otherwise if will be totally useless.

There is fine balance between losing the sensitive data stored in your thumb drive and being unable to recover it in case of an accident. If you are a DataVault® user, Condor IT Solutions provides a solution to optionally encrypt your data. If disaster strikes, you can still recover your data using our decryptor tool available at www.condor-datavault.com

If you are not using DataVault or you have an alternate method of backup, there are many options to protect your data. Free tools like TrueCrypt or more advanced and expensive options will do the job for you. Just be sure you are aware of how to retrieve your encrypted data if the need ever arises.

In many situations the need to ensure that access to sensitive information is restricted to certain people makes encryption a must. To ensure that the information arrives un-altered, you need to setup proper security schemes. Encryption schemes can be broken, but making them as hard as possible to break is the job of a good cipher designer. All you can really do is to make it very difficult for the code breaker to decipher your cipher. Regardless, as long as both source and encrypted data are available, it will always be possible to break your code. It just won't necessarily be easy.

Feel free to contact us if you would like more information about data encryption and Site-to-Site Data Backup and Recovery Program.