[LINK] Hacking of medical records

[Robert Brockway]

On Tue, 11 Dec 2012, Jan Whitaker wrote:

> I seem to recall a throw away line either in a written story or a tv
> interview where the person said it was better to keep your backups
> off the network, too. One can only speculate what the person meant by that!

Hi Jan.  In order to maximise the chances of a successful data recovery 
there should always be at least one full set of data backed up that 
conforms to the following criteria:

* Offsite
* Offline
* Tested

Having the backup offsite provides geographic separation that tends to 
protect against physical problems (that are constrained by physical 
distance).

Having the backup offline provides logical separation that tends to 
protect against logical problems (scripts that delete backups, deliberate 
attacks over the wire[1], etc).

These two collectively provide 'availability' of the backup.

Testing provides 'integrity' of the backup.

Some readers may now be thinking of the 'CIA triad'.

A fourth criteria (encrypted) can be added to finish the triad with 
'confidentiality'[2].

[1] This is not the first time online backups have been attacked.  There 
was a high profile case of online backup deletion a couple of years ago.

[2] I'm cautious about recommending encrypting backups however as it 
requires a 'technological maturity' that I'm yet to see in most 
organisations, even large organisations.  If you encrypt your backups you 
must make provision for key recovery (eg, key escrow).

Cheers,

Rob

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