[Pasig-discuss] Risks of encryption & compression built into storage options?

Fri Mar 17 05:06:15 EDT 2017

Jos

It’s quite simple – when one record is corrupted or altered then a checksum doesn’t always catch it - for instance an error upstream of the checksumming mechanism that gets committed to storage through legitimate channels. People tend to assume erroneously that software, hardware and people work correctly – the most common causes of corruption are going to be human error and software faults. Ray has already described the long chain of error-prone transmission even simple operations entail without even getting into software, operating systems and human processes – all of which are considerably less reliable than modern hardware.

With that sort of error then you have two copies of supposedly correct information and no way of telling which is correct. If you have three copies maintained in a suitably independent way then the error should only affect one and it stands out clearly. However, ensuring that the three copies are genuinely independent is not simple – human error can often propagate to all three. This is where versioning and audit trails become essential.

In terms of encryption – if some else can’t get the data out of the medium in the absence of additional hardware and software then neither can you. Another thing to consider is that a bit error in uncompressed, unencrypted storage is a bit error in a single file or data structure and can often be reasonably easily corrected. A bit error in encrypted or compressed storage can actually destroy a lot more data because the nature of the algorithms used mean that a single bit in storage corresponds at least partially to a number of bits in the source data.

Neil Jefferies MA MBA
Head of Innovation
Bodleian Digital Library Systems and Services
Osney One
Osney Mead
OX2 0EW
T: +44 1865 2-80588

From: Pasig-discuss [mailto:pasig-discuss-bounces at asis.org] On Behalf Of van Wezel, Jos (SCC)
Sent: 17 March 2017 07:48
To: Chris Wood <lw85381 at yahoo.com>; Raymond A. Clarke <Raymond.Clarke1 at Verizon.net>; gail at trumantechnologies.com; 'Jeanne Kramer-Smyth' <jkramersmyth at worldbankgroup.org>; 'Robert Spindler' <rob.spindler at asu.edu>; pasig-discuss at mail.asis.org
Subject: Re: [Pasig-discuss] Risks of encryption & compression built into storage options?

Chris,
do you happen to have any reference to the mathatical correctness or computation that 3 copies is optimal. Is proof based on the standard ecc values that vendors list with their components (tapes,  disks,  transport lines, memory etc). I'm asking because its difficult to argue for the additional costs of a third copy without the math. Currently I can't tell my customers how much (as in percentage) extra security an addittional copy will bring, even theoretically.

regards

jos

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------
From: Chris Wood <lw85381 at yahoo.com<mailto:lw85381 at yahoo.com>>
Date: 17/03/2017 02:07 (GMT+01:00)
To: "Raymond A. Clarke" <Raymond.Clarke1 at Verizon.net<mailto:Raymond.Clarke1 at Verizon.net>>, gail at trumantechnologies.com<mailto:gail at trumantechnologies.com>, 'Jeanne Kramer-Smyth' <jkramersmyth at worldbankgroup.org<mailto:jkramersmyth at worldbankgroup.org>>, 'Robert Spindler' <rob.spindler at asu.edu<mailto:rob.spindler at asu.edu>>, pasig-discuss at mail.asis.org<mailto:pasig-discuss at mail.asis.org>
Subject: Re: [Pasig-discuss] Risks of encryption & compression built into storage options?

Thanks Ray as always for a great summary. Now my three bits:

Three (3) copies please. One of which is in a remote location on a different flood plane, Electric grid, fault line etc. for the obvious reasons. Mathematically, this has turned out to be the optimal number looked at with a cost/benefit mindset. Kind of like: 2 is better than one, buta  local problem gets both copies. Three (remote) is more expensive but you get A LOT more data resilience/persistence. Four costs a bunch more, but delivers just a little bit more resilience. Four+ are all examples of ever diminishing returns.

CW
On 3/16/2017 4:40 PM, Raymond A. Clarke wrote:
Hello All,

A few years back, I did some research on bit-rot and data corruption, as it relates to the various medium that data passes through, on its way to and from the user.  Consider this simple example; as data from memory to HBA to cable to air to cable and so on, bits can be lost along way at any one of, or several of the medium transit  points. This something that current technologies can help with, in part.  Back to the original question, :how do we insure against corruption, either from compression, encryption” and/or transmission?  Well disk and tape(data resting places, if you will) have a come very long way in reducing bit-error rates, compression and encryption.  But the “resting places” are only part of a problem.  In accordance with Gail’s suggestion and as Dr. Rosenthal has coined, LOCKSS (“lot of copies keep stuff safe”).

Take good care,
Raymond

From: Pasig-discuss [mailto:pasig-discuss-bounces at asis.org] On Behalf Of gail at trumantechnologies.com<mailto:gail at trumantechnologies.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2017 5:10 PM
To: Jeanne Kramer-Smyth <jkramersmyth at worldbankgroup.org><mailto:jkramersmyth at worldbankgroup.org>; Robert Spindler <rob.spindler at asu.edu><mailto:rob.spindler at asu.edu>; pasig-discuss at mail.asis.org<mailto:pasig-discuss at mail.asis.org>
Subject: Re: [Pasig-discuss] Risks of encryption & compression built into storage options?

Hello again, Jeanne,

I think you're hitting on something that needs to be raised to (and pushed for with) vendors, and that is the need for "More transparency" and the reporting to customers of "events" that are part of the provenance of a digital object. The storage architectures do a good job of error detection and self healing; however, they do not report this out. I'd like to (this is my dream) have vendors report back to customers (as part of their SLA) when a object (or part of an object if it's been chunked) has been repaired/self-healed - or lost forever. I could then record this as a PREMIS event. As you know, vendors "design for" 11x9s or 13x9s durability, but their SLAs do not require them to tell us if their durability and data corruption starts to get really bad for whatever reason.

I've not directly answered your question about whether the encryption, dedupe, compression, and other things that can happen inside a storage system is increasing the risk of corruption. I'll look around. I am sure the disk vendors and storage solution and cloud storage vendors have run the numbers, but am not sure if they're made public.

This alias has people from Oracle, Seagate and other storage companies on it so I encourage them to please share any research they have on this -

Gail

Gail Truman
Truman Technologies, LLC
Certified Digital Archives Specialist, Society of American Archivists

Protecting the world's digital heritage for future generations
www.trumantechnologies.com<http://www.trumantechnologies.com>
facebook/TrumanTechnologies
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gtruman

+1 510 502 6497

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: [Pasig-discuss] Risks of encryption & compression built
into storage options?
From: Jeanne Kramer-Smyth <jkramersmyth at worldbankgroup.org<mailto:jkramersmyth at worldbankgroup.org>>
Date: Thu, March 16, 2017 1:44 pm
To: "gail at trumantechnologies.com<mailto:gail at trumantechnologies.com>" <gail at trumantechnologies.com<mailto:gail at trumantechnologies.com>>, "Robert
Spindler" <rob.spindler at asu.edu<mailto:rob.spindler at asu.edu>>, "pasig-discuss at mail.asis.org<mailto:pasig-discuss at mail.asis.org>"
<pasig-discuss at mail.asis.org<mailto:pasig-discuss at mail.asis.org>>
Thanks Gail & Rob for your replies.

I am less worried about the scenario of someone stealing a drive – as Rob pointed out, if that is happening we have bigger problems.

I do wonder if there are increased risks of bit-rot/file corruption with encryption, compression, and data deduplication. Have there been any studies on this? Could pulling a file off a drive that requires reversal of the auto-encryption and auto-compression in place at the system level mean a greater risk of bits flipping? I am trying to contrast the increased “handling” and change required to get from the stored version to the original version vs the decreased “handling” it would require if what I am pulling off the storage device is exactly what I sent to be stored.

I am less worried about issues related to not being able to decrypt content. The storage solutions we are contemplating would remain under enough ongoing management that these issues should be avoidable. Since ensuring that non-public records remain secure is also very important, encryption gets some points in the “pro” column. I agree that having multiple copies in different storage architectures and with different vendors would also decrease risk.

I want to understand the risks related to the different storage architectures and the ever increasing number of “automatic” things being done to digital objects in the process of them being stored and retrieved. Are there people doing work, independent of vendor claims, to document these types of risks?

Thank you,

Jeanne
Jeanne Kramer-Smyth

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From: gail at trumantechnologies.com<mailto:gail at trumantechnologies.com> [mailto:gail at trumantechnologies.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2017 3:18 PM
To: Robert Spindler <rob.spindler at asu.edu<mailto:rob.spindler at asu.edu>>; Jeanne Kramer-Smyth <jkramersmyth at worldbankgroup.org<mailto:jkramersmyth at worldbankgroup.org>>; pasig-discuss at mail.asis.org<mailto:pasig-discuss at mail.asis.org>
Subject: RE: [Pasig-discuss] Risks of encryption & compression built into storage options?

Hi all, a good topic!
There is new drive technology from Seagate (probably other manufacturers) called "Self Encrypted Drives" (SEDs) which can be used to solve the problem of a person stealing a drive and running off with data.

Most cloud services now automatically provide "server side encryption" which means the vendor is doing the encryption for all data at rest (as you point out Jeanne). This is required by HIPAA for all health care data, and is now considered cloud best practice for cloud vendors due to the very real risk of hacking. So, for archival, we need to weigh the data security provided by cloud storage services using server side encryption with the risk of the vendor managing the encryption keys. Which IMO underscores the importance of having multiple copies of all your archival data -- with different vendors and storage architectures or media types if possible.

Gail

Gail Truman
Truman Technologies, LLC
Certified Digital Archives Specialist, Society of American Archivists

Protecting the world's digital heritage for future generations
www.trumantechnologies.com<http://www.trumantechnologies.com>
facebook/TrumanTechnologies
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gtruman

+1 510 502 6497

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Pasig-discuss] Risks of encryption & compression built
into storage options?
From: Robert Spindler <rob.spindler at asu.edu<mailto:rob.spindler at asu.edu>>
Date: Thu, March 16, 2017 9:06 am
To: Jeanne Kramer-Smyth <jkramersmyth at worldbankgroup.org<mailto:jkramersmyth at worldbankgroup.org>>,
"pasig-discuss at mail.asis.org<mailto:pasig-discuss at mail.asis.org>" <pasig-discuss at mail.asis.org<mailto:pasig-discuss at mail.asis.org>>
At risk of starting a conversation, here are a couple basic issues from an archival standpoint:

Encryption: Who has the keys and what happens should a provider go out of business?

Compression: Lossy or Lossless and how does that compression act on different file formats (video/audio). If this is frequently accessed material it becomes more of an issue.

Short story: At a CNI meeting perhaps 15 years ago in a session about ebooks I asked a panel of vendors if they would give up the keys to encrypted e-books when they reached public domain. Crickets.

Physical discs are not secure given the forensics software widely available today, but if someone can grab a physical disc the provider has more problems than forensics.

Rob Spindler
University Archivist and Head
Archives and Special Collections
Arizona State University Libraries
Tempe AZ 85287-1006
480.965.9277
http://www.asu.edu/lib/archives

From: Pasig-discuss [mailto:pasig-discuss-bounces at asis.org] On Behalf Of Jeanne Kramer-Smyth
Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2017 8:54 AM
To: pasig-discuss at mail.asis.org<mailto:pasig-discuss at mail.asis.org>
Subject: [Pasig-discuss] Risks of encryption & compression built into storage options?

Is anyone aware of active research into the risks to digital preservation that are posed by built in encryption and compression in both cloud and on-prem storage options? Any and all go-to sources for research and reading on these topics would be very welcome.

I am being told by the staff who source storage solutions for my organization that encryption and compression are generally included at the hardware level. That content is automatically encrypted and compressed as it is written to disc – and then un-encrypted and un-compressed as it is pulled off disc in response to a request. It is advertised as both more secure (someone stealing a physical disc could not, in theory, extract its contents) and more cost efficient (taking up less space).

I want to be sure that as we make our choices for long-term storage of permanent digital records that we take these risks into accounts.

Thank you!
Jeanne

Jeanne Kramer-Smyth

IT Officer, Information Management Services II

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Information and Technology Solutions
WBG Library & Archives of Development

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202-473-9803

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