Educause Security Discussion mailing list archives
Re: Vista
From: Gary Flynn <flynngn () JMU EDU>
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2007 09:57:56 -0500
Mclaughlin, Kevin L (mclaugkl) wrote:
I was wondering what your approach or thoughts are surrounding:
We're still in the planning stages, but...
1.) key management of Vista’s built in Encryption capability – are you going to try and centralize key management via Active Directory or just let each individual hold their own keys?
EFS - Join computers wanting to use EFS to a domain so a domain recovery agent account is available. We're also looking into Microsoft CA to automate key generation and backup but at this point, the domain recovery agent is the primary strategy. We'll also have documentation on handling the keys manually with lots of warnings and caveats. BitLocker - We're talking about joining all incoming Vista computers to a domain with necessary schema changes to support AD key storage. That schema change needs to be done and the Vista computer joined to a domain before BitLocker is enabled. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=3a207915-dfc3-4579-90cd-86ac666f61d4&DisplayLang=en The majority of our computers are not in a Microsoft domain so we have some challenges ahead not faced by many other organizations,... political, logistical, and technical.
a. My concerns with individuals holding their own keys are: what if they get hit by a bus? What if we are asked by their Dean, the FBI or local law enforcement to do a Forensic exam on their system?
That is why we're looking into centralized key backup/recovery options. But encryption is not the only situation that raises those issues. What if they lose their laptop? What if their disk drive malfunctions making the data irretrievable? What if they install PGP, Truecrypt, or any number of other encryption packages on their own? What if they securely delete their data? What if they refuse to turn over a laptop? Backups are necessary to solve encryption and other data recovery issues and backups raise their own security issues. Policy surrounding encryption use is necessary but unless desktop configuration is managed and enforced, it is still left up to individual discretion. Education and awareness is probably key to prevent problems caused by general ignorance of the issues.
2.) Are you going to establish a policy or guidelines that talk about Faculty and Staff key encryption key management responsibilities? If so would you mind sharing such a policy with us?
I don't know about policy but we'll certainly have a whole lot of warnings, caveats, and recommendations included with the documentation for using the features. -- Gary Flynn Security Engineer James Madison University www.jmu.edu/computing/security