[ale] OT - SED drive compatibility

Jim Kinney jim.kinney at gmail.com
Mon Sep 8 13:12:03 EDT 2014


Added layer of physical security for HIPAA compliance led to the wholesale
adoption. Yes, remote access and data theft would occur to a decrypted
filesystem once it's running. But much of my work often requires encrypted
data at rest for many system and the performance hit is essentially trivial
compared to the rest of the system, so it's easy to to keep that as a
default. The HPC systems have absolutely all security disabled and are
hidden behind firewalls on private LAN, etc.

It also indicates a level of unsure trust of the physical access to the
systems. Never had an issue but don't want to be on the wrong end if
something does happen.

On Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 12:54 PM, Beddingfield, Allen <allen at ua.edu> wrote:

> I'm curious about why you would encrypt filesystems on servers, if you
> have control of physical access?  If the server is up and online, the
> drives would be decrypted, and the files would be accessible by any remote
> exploit.  I'm sure I'm missing a good reason for it, but I haven't had
> enough caffeine to fully get the brain cranked up today :D
> --
> Allen Beddingfield
> Systems Engineer
> The University of Alabama
>
> ________________________________________
> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [ale-bounces at ale.org] on behalf of Jim Kinney [
> jim.kinney at gmail.com]
> Sent: Monday, September 08, 2014 11:46 AM
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
> Subject: Re: [ale] OT - SED drive compatibility
>
> Using LUKS software encryption on a system with 15k RPM drives will be a
> minimal hit on performance as long as there is adequate RAM and cores to do
> the decryption. A single core is enough and the RAM needs are actually
> small. A few blocks at a time are fed through for decrypt then passed to
> buffers for use.
>
> I use LUKS on EVERY public facing (and many internal only systems) server.
> The only big caveat is the need to have remote console so the password can
> be entered for key decryption after a reboot.
>
>
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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain
at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail.
It won't fatten the dog.
- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain


*http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/
<http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/>*
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