Friday, April 18, 2008

Risks, cost of an attack versus price of encryption

Very interesting article by Charlie Martin in Computerworld exploring how expensive (or rather cheap) encryption really is compared to potential losses due to data loss...

Not sure he calculated the costs and probability of the cold boot attack quite right - I think the fact that over 40% of folks do not shut down their laptops while travelling makes this a higer probability. (This number came from a short survey we did in Pittsburgh with around 200 respondents - will provide more details in a forthcoming blog). Now cosider the fact that people think this can be done - this changes behaviour of thieves, methinks.

However, the general idea that Charlie has is spot on - the peace of mind, staying away from the headlines, the lowering of probability is what securing data is all about....

1 comment:

Industrial Electronics said...

There's an old saying, "You never know what you have until it's gone" so it would be with security. Better safe (and spend money) then sorry.