Is this even a legitimate question anymore? With all the data breaches happening all over the world, you would think that everyone would encrypt all electronic information and communication by default. Many do, but many don’t. Is it a lack of interest? Not knowing what to do? Not understanding what encryption is?
A lot of people talk about encryption, but not many really understand what it does or how to do it. At its basic level encryption is a way to transform information into something that an unintended recipient can’t understand. The concept of encryption is nothing new. It started thousands of years ago when people wanted to keep secrets from each other. Someone would encode a message with a special key and then pass the encrypted message to the intended recipient. If you didn’t have the key, the message was gibberish. The key could be anything from substituting letters in a pattern to a special decoder ring kids used to get in cereal boxes (my personal favorite).
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This is a great video about online and office security. It looks like a public service ad from the 1950s complete with bobby soxers and grainy footage. If you aren’t doing it, heed the list of actions at the end to keep your data safe from hackers and other malicious activity.
There is currently a lot of talk about privacy in digital communications and storage of information. Facebook has been slammed in the past for ignoring its users’ privacy with confusing or misleading settings. Just this week they announced enhanced and new settings, including two-factor authentication, so they are making progress. Other cloud service providers have different takes on privacy, but most have policies saying they will not collect and store personally identifiable information (PII), unless needed to perform a transaction. They also say that you own the data you store and that they take no responsibility for it.
But what about your rights of keeping that data private from a search? I’m not talking about a search engine, but a legal search. The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States protects citizens against unreasonable search and seizure of property; there are similar laws in many other countries. If you store data in the cloud, is that protected under the Fourth Amendment?
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Today is Tax Day in the United States, although this year we have a reprieve until April 18, because of Emancipation Day celebrated in the District of Columbia. Taxes go to many things, just as revenue dollars do in businesses. They help pay for roads, bridges, national defense, police, firefighters, and a million other things. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lack of funds going toward protecting people’s personal data.
Just in the last few weeks there have been a large number of data breaches from the US federal and state governments. The issues with all these incidents are the same. Your and my personal information is not adequately protected, but the reasons are not the same. Some were database hacks, some were lost or stolen PCs and many were negligent behavior. Whether the negligence came out of ignorance or a lack of following process and procedure is irrelevant. The outcomes were the same.
Here is a sampling of government data breaches in the last few weeks:
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Bill Blake, President and COO of eDocument Sciences, will join Randy Dazo, Director of Solution & Services at InfoTrends, to speak about MFP security as part of BTA’s ‘Building My Business’ Webinar Series. The webinar will be on Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 4 pm eastern time.
The webinar series, which is exclusively for BTA members, is designed to help office technology dealers improve the management of their companies, take full advantage of market opportunities and, ultimately, improve the bottom line.
The webinar will cover security, compliance, and the risks that affect the office document industry. Historically IT worries about keeping the bad guys out of organizations, but the threat has moved inside. The MFP is a computer on your network and has all the vulnerabilities of any other computer. Dazo and Blake will highlight market research findings, discuss the vulnerable areas on MFP devices, and review the different solutions available today that can help organizations become more secure.
Join this webinar to:
- Understand these new shifts in security that are affecting the market
- See what current organizations are doing around MFP security today
- Explore the different areas of the MFP device that can pose security and vulnerability risks
- Learn about different solutions that are helping customers to address security on their MFP devices
The webinar is open to all BTA members. To register, please visit www.bta.org.
