[GRLUG] Disk scrubber

[Bob Kline]

Sounds right.  People fret endlessly about
computer security,  but the big ticket items
still seem to be very low tech.  Like the
cardboard box full of plans you mention....

It's good to plug all the holes that reasonably
can be,  but I suspect that while glamorous,
hackers don't do nearly the damage that plain
old theft and carelessness do.

Re 0% and 100%, sounds like an opening for
a Laffer curve....

   -Bob


On 7/25/06, Tim Schmidt <timschmidt at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/25/06, Bob Kline <bob.kline at gmail.com> wrote:
> >  You'd think that if security of all kinds
> >  was the issue,  and the hard drive
> >  industry really could provide an effective
> >  erase mechanism,  that overall security
> >  would be improved by implementing it.
> >  That was people could, in principle,
> >  erase their drives thoroughly before
> >  they get rid of them.  How many would
> >  actually bother is always a question.
> >
> >  But as we read repeatedly,  the bigger
> >   problem seems to be simple theft.  Gov't
> >  laptops ( tax payer laptops really ) seem
> >  to disappear daily,  and somehow they
> >  always seem to have a few million Social
> >  Security or credit card numbers on them,
> >   or all the military's codes and plans.
> >  One can provide certain kinds of security,
> >  but it might just be that the big ticket
> >  items are from people just walking away
> >  with the hard drive or the machine it's in.
> >
> >      -Bob
>
> Heh.  A friend of mine interned with Barnes Aerospace...  withholding
> names and places here for obvious reasons.  He said that a fairly
> large cardboard box containing all of Barnes' plans for B2 bomber
> parts went missing for about a week.  Complete with the lead engineer
> wandering the halls asking everyone if they'd seen it.
>
> Security, digital or otherwise, is really hard.  You can achieve 100%
> security, but only at the cost of 0% usability.  The right balance is
> the key.
>
> --tim
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