At the start of the New Year, CIO magazine has data protection and governance at the top of the list for this year. I thought this was supposed to be taken care from day one! In this age when words are being patented, we are still trying to figure out to protect data.
Author: Shaheen
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?
Key Management in Java
Sometimes developers find it confusing or hard to connect the dots between some of the key management interfaces in Java especially the key generators, key tool and key store.
EDW Regulations and Implications
Some of the regulations that needs to be considered while building an Enterprise Data Warehouse in North America are SOX and GLB of the US, Bill 198 and PIPEDA of Canada and PCI.
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.
Google to follow PIPEDA
Google announced today that it will follow the Canadian Privacy Law (PIPEDA) when it comes to Street View imaging. Canada’s privacy commissioner is happy and thinks Google and Calgary based Immersive Media is heading in the right direction. The commissioner is yet to hear the formal announcement from the both the companies.
Google Maps Streetview
Google is again on the news for privacy reasons. The Canadian Privacy Commissioner has raised concerns regarding the privacy of individuals captured in each and every photographs of streetwise. The resolution of the pictures is high enough to identify the individuals in the pictures.
Official (ISC)2 Guide – Review
Review of Official (ISC)2 Guide by Shaheen N Abdul Jabbar
Production Data as Test Data
In order to maintain high quality of code, a company needs to use production quality source data for development, unit test and QA functional test purposes. There could be situations when the company uses unscrambled production source data, which potentially exposes customer sensitive data. Customer sensitive data must be protected. Given that there is a correlation between the quality of test data and the quality of code delivered to production, all efforts should be made to minimize the disruption/distortion of test data, while satisfying the privacy concerns.