Security Concepts in Data Security

Last Updated on: Jul 20, 2010 05:47 AM

Importance of securing data

Data Security means ensuring that the data is free from any type of fraud and the access to this data is controlled in such a way that only authorized users can access the data. Data refers to personal information regarding the individuals, bank details, etc. Data in transfer, across and between company networks, are usually the focus of extensive security efforts.
However, organizations typically regard data residing on internal storage devices as secure enough. Hence, there is a need for everyone to secure the data so that it does not fall into the hands of unauthorized users.

Different methods of securing data

There are different types of data to be secured. The procedure regarding how to secure different types of data is given below.

Shared Information

• Make sure that the shared information is accessed by the authorized users and also specify the data that should be shared and data that should not be shared by the public.
• Many people on the internet keep their personal and confidential information in the shared form. So these people have to be provide training for not to share their information to the unauthorized users. This information will be kept as safe and secure as possible, used for the purpose given and not shared with or passed on to others.

Securing data during transmission

• Securing the data while transmitting it includes encryption and authentication and also the end-to-end users are authorized.
• Authentication is secret information that is shared between two computers before the actual communication starts.
• Public key encryption is another means of authentication, which authenticates only the receiver and not the sender with the help of the keys, which are possessed by the two systems by other means.
• Encrypted  data without a key can be easily accessed by modern computer users by 27 performing brute force attack. So in order to protect the encrypted data the key length should be long sothat it is not easy to guess it. Encrypting the data only ensures that the data cannot be read by the third party in an understandable format when the data has been received by them.

Web browser

Ensure that the data being sent using browser application is secured by seeing the URL. Ensure that it is using HTTPS instead of HTTP in the URL for authentication.

Secure e-Mail programs

Secure email programs use public key encryption for sending and receiving messages. This works well when both the users are using secure email programs otherwise the user should send e-Mails without using secure email programs.

Secure Shell

Previously, computer users used telnet application to connect to remote systems. However telnet transfers the information in clear text. To avoid this problem 'Secure shell' has been introduced, which sends the data in the encrypted form. It uses public key cryptography for encryption and also ensures confidentiality and data integrity.

Data backup

Losing an important file is the worst thing that could ever happen to a person today.. Another method of securing the data is by taking the backup of the original data into another disk or tape. This backup helps the users to retrieve the original data in case of hard disk failures.
Still we are largely using  CDs and  DVDs to backup our important files. What happens when that CD/DVD is corrupted?? Here is a solution to recover all those files. Recovery Toolbox, which probably could help you to recover some, damaged data that you might have thought to be permanently lost.

Securing data by disposal

When the data which the user does not require any more is deleted  ,care should be taken while deleting the data so that the data cannot be reconstructed by an unauthorized person. Deleting the information and formatting does not ensure that the data is safely deleted.
In order to delete the data permanently, some software tools are available, which will prevent the data from being reconstructed. Some operating systems allow formatting command in such a way that it not only formats but also adds zero into that place. The easiest way of deleting the data is by using wiping program which not only formats the disk but also adds some garbage data into it.

There are several algorithms available for secure disposal.

Single pass

Here the data is overwritten with 1's and 0's for only one time.

DoD 5520.22-M Standard

This standard overwrites the addressable locations with characters and complements and compares it with other.

Guttmann method

This method overwrites the data for nearly 35 times and this will be done by taking in to the account various encoding algorithms used by various disk manufacturers. Linux and UNIX systems implement a file destruction command to protect files that contain sensitive content from being recovered by someone else. The 'shared' command overwrites the specified files repeatedly, in order to make it harder for even very expensive hardware probing to recover the data. It additionally provides the feature to shared and then delete a file from the hard disk. Another Linux/Unix command that can be used to format a disk drive completely is the 'dd' command. When certain switches to this command are used, the entire disk is rewritten to zeros.