Protecting Clear Text Password

Passwords are the basic type of authentication in a system. They are easy to implement and also easy to attack. However, there are situations where you need to use a password to protect access to a resource. Its fine if an end user of system is providing the password directly to the system. Sometimes you need to store the password in a configuration file of a system. That’s where the dilemma starts. You have a scheduled SFTP process that needs a password to start. Do you keep the password in clear text or do you encrypt it? If you encrypt it, then how do you protect the key to encrypt and decrypt the password?

EDW Security Considerations

An Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW), according to California State University, is a collection of data that can be defined and shared across the whole enterprise along the lines of common dimensions to be used for analysis. While you are in the designing phase of an EDW, there are certain security and related functional requirements that needs to be considered.

Protect Information in Laptops

Very frequently, we hear news of stolen laptops that contains sensitive information which could potentially be anything from Personal Identifiable Information (PII) to corporate intellectual information. The latest being the news in Canada that a consultant for the Provincial Public Health Laboratory lost a laptop that includes names, Medical Care Plan numbers, age, sex, physician and test results for infectious diseases, including HIV and hepatitis.