Research

Rich here, Before I get into the cold open for this week, the past few days have been pretty nasty for privacy, security, and the digital supply chain. I will have a post on that up soon, but you can skip to the Top News section to catch the main stories. They are essential reading this week, and we don’t say that often. I am a ridiculous techno-addict, and have been my entire life. I suspect I inherited it from my father, who brought home an early microwave (likely responsible for my hair loss), video tape deck (where I watched Star Wars before VHS was on the market, the year the movie came out), and even a reel to reel videotape camera (black and white) I used for my own directorial debuts… often featuring my Star Wars figures. Gadgets have always been one of my vices, but as I have grown older they not only got cheaper, but also cheaper than what many of my 40+-year-old peers spend money on (cars, extra houses, extramarital partners for said houses, etc. ). That said, over time I have become a bit more discerning about where I drop money as I have come to better understand my own tastes and needs… and as my kids killed any semblance of hobby time. For this week’s Summary I thought I’d highlight a few of my current favorite gadgets. This isn’t even close to exhaustive – just a few current favorites. Logitech Harmony Ultimate Home + Hub – I don’t actually have all that crazy a TV setup, but it’s just complex enough that I wanted a universal remote. We switch a ton between our Apple TV and TiVo Roamio, and our kids are so that young regular remotes are a mess. The Harmony Ultimate is exactly what the name says. The remote itself is relatively small and has an adaptive touch screen that configures itself to the activity you are in. While it has an infrared transmitter like all remotes, it really uses RF to communicate to the Hub, which is located in our AV cabinet under the TV, and includes an IR blaster to hit all the components. This setup brings three key advantages. First, you don’t need to worry about where to point the remote. My kids would always lose aim in the middle of a multi-component command (something as simple as turning things on or off) and get frustrated. That’s no longer an issue. Second, the touch screen itself makes a cleaner remote with less buttons. You can prioritize the ones you use on the display, but still access all the obscure ones. Finally, the Hub is network enabled, and pairs with an iOS app. If I can’t find the remote I use my phone and everything looks and works the same. Because children. I have used earlier Logitech remotes and this is the first one that really delivers on all the promises. It is pricy, but futureproof, and even integrates with home automation products. I also got $80 off during a random Amazon sale. There isn’t anything else like this on the market, and I don’t regret it. We used our last Harmony remote for 7 years with our main TV, and it’s now in another room, so we got our money’s worth. Garmin Forerunner 920XT – I’m a triathlete. Not a great one by any means, but that’s my sport of choice these days. The Garmin 920XT was my holiday present this year, and it changed how I think about smartwatches. First, as a fitness tool, it is ridiculous. Aside from the GPS (and GLONASS – thank you, Russian friends), it connects with a ton of sensors, works as a basic smartwatch, and even includes an accelerometer – not only for step tracking, but also run tracking on treadmills and swim stroke tracking in pools. I didn’t expect to wear it every day but I do. Even getting simple notifications on my wrist means less pulling my phone out of my pocket, and I don’t worry about missing calls when I chase the kids during the work day and leave my phone on my desk. Yes, I’ll switch to an Apple Watch day-to-day when it comes out, but I went on a 17-mile run during working hours this week, and knowing I didn’t miss anything important was liberating. The 920XT is insane as a fitness tool. It will estimate your VO2 Max and predict race performance based on heart rate variability. It pulls in more metrics than you knew existed (or can use, but it makes us geeks happy). You can expand it with Garmin’s new ConnectIQ app platform. I added a half-marathon race predictor for my last race, and it helped me set a new PR – I am not great at math in the middle of a race. It walks me through structured workouts, then automatically uploads everything via my phone or home WiFi when I’m done, which then syncs to Strava and TrainingPeaks. If you aren’t a multisport athlete I’d check out the Fenix 3 or Vivoactive. They both support ConnectIQ. Neato XV-11 Robotic Vacuum – With multiple cats and allergies I was an early Roomba user. It worked well but had some key annoyances. It nearly never found its base to recharge, I’d have to remember to use the “virtual wall” infrared barriers to keep it in a room, and it was a royal pain to clean. Then I switched to the Neato XV-11 (an older model). It uses a stronger vacuum than the Roomba, is much easier to clean, maps rooms with LIDAR (laser radar), and nearly always finds its base to recharge. It is also much easier to schedule. The Neato will scan a room, clean until the battery gets low, go back to base, recharge, and then start out again up to 3 times (when it’s running on a schedule). It detects doorways automatically, stays in the room you put it in, and

This is the sixth post in a new series. If you want to track it through the entire editing process, you can follow along and contribute on GitHub. You can read the first post and find the other posts under “related posts” in full article view. Top Encryption Use Cases Encryption, like most security, is only adopted in response to a business need. It may be a need to keep corporate data secret, protect customer privacy, ensure data integrity, or satisfy a compliance mandate that requires data protection – but there is always a motivating factor driving companies to encrypt. The principal use cases have changed over the years, but these are still common. Databases Protecting data stored in databases is a top use case across mainframes, relational, and NoSQL databases. The motivation may be to combat data breaches, keep administrators honest, support multi-tenancy, satisfy contractual obligations, or even comply with state privacy laws. Surprisingly, database encryption is a relatively new phenomenon. Database administrators historically viewed encryption as carrying unacceptable performance overhead, and data security professionals viewed it as a redundant control – only effective if firewalls, identity management, and other security measures all failed. Only recently has the steady stream of data breaches shattered this false impression. Combined with continued performance advancements, multiple deployment options, and general platform maturity, database encryption no longer carries a stigma. Today data sprawls across hundreds of internal databases, test systems, and third-party service providers; so organizations use a mixture of encryption, tokenization, and data masking to tailor protection to each potential threat – regardless of where data is moved and used. The two best options for encrypting a database are encrypting data fields in the application before sending to the database and Transparent Database Encryption. Some databases support field-level encryption, but the primary driver for database encryption is usually to restrict database administrators from seeing specific data, so organizations cannot rely on the database’s own encryption capabilities. TDE (via the database feature or an external tool) is best to protect this data in storage. It is especially useful if you need to encrypt a lot of data and for legacy applications where adding field encryption isn’t reasonable. For more information see Understanding and Selecting a Database Encryption or Tokenization Solution. Cloud Storage Encryption is the main data security control for cloud computing. It enables organizations to maintain control over data security, even in multitenant environments. If you encrypt data, and control the key, even your cloud provider cannot access it. Unfortunately cloud encryption is generally messy for SaaS, but there are decent options to integrate encryption into PaaS, and excellent ones for IaaS. The most common use cases are encrypting storage volumes associated with applications, encrypting application data, and encrypting data in object storage. Some cloud providers are even adding options for customers to manage their own encryption keys, while the provider encrypts and decrypts the data within the platform (we call this Bring Your Own Key). For details see our paper on Defending Cloud Data with Infrastructure Encryption. Compliance Compliance is a principal driver of encryption and tokenization sales. Some obligations, such as PCI, explicitly require it, while others provide a “safe harbor” provision in case encrypted data is lost. Typical policies cover IT administrators accessing data, users issuing ad hoc queries, retrieval of “too much” information, or examination of restricted data elements such as credit card numbers. So compliance controls typically focus on issues of privileged user entitlements (what users can access), segregation of duties (so admins cannot read sensitive data), and the security of data as it moves between application and database instances. These policies are typically enforced by the applications which process users requests, limiting access (decryption) according to policy. Policies can be as simple as allowing only certain users to see certain types of data. More complicated policies build in fraud deterrence, limit how many records specific users are allowed to see, and shut off access entirely in response to suspicious user behavior. In other use cases, where companies move sensitive data to third-party systems they do not control, data masking and tokenization have become popular choices for ensuring sensitive data does not leave the company at all. Payments The payments use case deserves special mention; although commonly viewed as an offshoot of compliance, it is more a backlash – an attempt to avoid compliance requirements altogether. Before data breaches it was routine to copy payment data (account numbers and credit card numbers) anywhere they could possibly be used, but now each copy carries the burden of security and oversight, which costs money. Lots of it. In most cases payment data was not required, but the usage patterns based around it became so entrenched that removal would break applications. For example merchants do not need to store – or even see – customer credit card numbers for payment, but many of their IT systems were designed around credit card numbers. In the payment use case, the idea is to remove payment data wherever possible, and thus the threat of data breach, thus reducing audit responsibility and cost. Here tokenization, format-preserving encryption, and masking have come into their own: removing sensitive payment data, and along with it most need for security and compliance. Industry organizations like PCI and regulatory bodies have only recently embraced these technical approaches for compliance scope reduction, and more recent variants (including Apple Pay merchant tokens) also improve user data privacy. Applications Every company depends on applications to one degree or another, and these applications process data critical to the business. Most applications, be they ‘web’ or ‘enterprise’, leverage encryption. Encryption capabilities may be embedded in the application or bundled with the underlying file system, storage array, or relational database system. Application encryption is selected when fine-grained control is needed, to encrypt select data elements, and to only decrypt information as appropriate for the application – not merely because recognized credentials were provided. This granularity of control comes at a price – it is more