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Will new commercial mobile encryption affect BYOD policy?

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Mobility

While law enforcement is up in arms about new default data encryption on Apple iOS and Google Android devices, experts say the policy could have some benefits for federal mobility as well.

Apple and Google are banking that consumers will want increased security for data stored on their devices. The default encryption policy means codes that unlock phones are known only to the users who set them, and can't be cracked using garden-variety cryptographic attacks. The companies can't share unlock codes with law enforcement, because they do not know them.

According to FBI Director James Comey, this is potentially disastrous for public safety. In a speech last week, he warned of potentially dire consequences for law enforcement from the encryption of data stored on devices, or data at rest. Comey worries the FBI won't be able to access sought-after data, even with a legal warrant or other authorization, because the companies are not maintaining a back door for law enforcement.

The flip side is that a lost or stolen device will not yield up its secrets -- an important feature for federal employees and other users who trade in confidential, non-public or secret information.

The Mobile Security Reference Architecture (MSRA), the CIO Council's handbook for mobility management, lists encryption for data at rest as a key security feature. David Carroll, chief federal architect at cybersecurity firm FireEye, led the team that wrote the MSRA when he was at the Department of Homeland Security. Carroll told FCW in an email interview that "in general, integrated and device implemented encryption is a benefit to users for protecting data at rest from compromise and making it difficult for malware to run due to the required access to the containers and [encryption] keys."

There are a few "buts" here, Carroll noted. There is the potential problem of lost data, which can be magnified when a fed is using a personal device connected to an agency network. "Agreements for [bring your own device polices] will have to cover restoration of access to government owned data on the device if they are used for government use," Carroll told FCW.

There will also need to be a significant degree of trust. The way encryption works, making a unique and virtually unbreakable key out of an access code and hardware embedded in the device means it would be "difficult for federal network administrators to escrow or keep a secure copy of the keys so that access can be restored to the data if the employee isn't able, or the device isn't accessible independent of the owner or user," Carroll said.

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Will new commercial mobile encryption affect BYOD policy?

Open source and the corporate concern — Strata + Hadoop 2014 – Video

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Open source and the corporate concern -- Strata + Hadoop 2014
Hadoop creator and Cloudera chief architect Doug Cutting talks with Tim O #39;Reilly about the risks of open source software being absorbed by big companies and the protections that come with the...

By: O #39;Reilly

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Open source and the corporate concern -- Strata + Hadoop 2014 - Video

The Inherent Dishonesty Inside Open Source

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The core theory behind the open source development model for software (or any open thing) states that there should be universal access for all to a product or services design. From this openness we are able to gather community contributions (often known as commits) that will lead to product refinement and enhancement that serves real users needs. Or so the theory goes.

An open system of innovation and development is characterized by a goal-oriented community of loosely coordinated participants. These users will fulfil a variety of roles including design, architecture and hard coding expertise as well as non-technical roles from communications to international language translation and beyond.

Openness is (not always) next to godliness

But openness is not always next to godliness. It is not uncommon for a project (even one as big as the Android mobile device operating system) to be populated with deviant and essentially unsupported skews and forks that find their way out into the total population of code on Earth. Not quite akin to a virus, this is code that has use but is not as useful as code (or product design of any kind) that has been subject to testing and quality control validation.

Then there is so-called openwashing i.e. providing trace elements of open source somewhere on a business model so that a company can attest to and demonstrate its philanthropic side. Purists argue that there is a big difference between opening your data and making it available; the open source list of besmirching malpractice is a long one.

The cod liver oil of open source

Consider the recent developments with the Facebook driven TODO project, aimed at making open source projects work better for big business. TODO describes itself as an open group of companies who want to collaborate on practices, tools and other ways to run successful and effective open source projects and programmes. But TODO has been criticised by open source purists as a kind of crass commercialisation of the open message. So is TODO the cod liver oil of open source such that companies swallow a little and then get on with making real proprietary money?

Theres something inherently dishonest about how these companies are using open source asserts Rafael Laguna, CEO, Open-Xchange, a company that develops web-based communication, collaboration and office productivity software.

Rather than help create open and interconnected systems, they are using open tools to build closed siloes that threaten the very nature of the open Internet. The driving force behind the free and open source software movements is to liberate technology and keep it open and accessible for everyone. Facebook, or Google for that matter, has no interest in making its ecosystem accessible from the outside. Its whole business model is based around it being the sole beneficiary of the data it continually builds higher walls around.

Laguna asserts that the recent tactic of Google, Facebook, et al, has been to create new alliances and cooperative projects to try and prove their open source and privacy credentials. In the last few years weve already seen the Open Computing Alliance, Open Invention Network, Open Data Center Alliance, the AllSeen Alliance which, claim the naysayers are vehicles for the big tech companies to convince us of their openness.

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The Inherent Dishonesty Inside Open Source

Julian Assange fears that his embassy hideout in London is being bugged

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Lawyers claim the 43-year-old is most likely under auditory surveillance Assange has been in embassy for two years to avoid extradition to Sweden Legal team say confinement is a deprivation of liberty under European law

By Ian Gallagher For The Mail On Sunday

Published: 16:02 EST, 18 October 2014 | Updated: 10:59 EST, 19 October 2014

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Julian Assange fears he is being bugged at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

Lawyers claim the WikiLeaks founder, who has been holed up in the embassy for the past two years to avoid extradition to Sweden, is most likely under auditory surveillance.

Last year a covert listening device was found behind a plug socket in the ambassadors office, but security experts described it as rudimentary and unlikely to have been the work of police or the security services.

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Julian Assange fears that his embassy hideout in London is being bugged

Exclusive: Laura Poitras on the Edward Snowden documentary | Channel 4 News – Video

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Exclusive: Laura Poitras on the Edward Snowden documentary | Channel 4 News
Subscribe to Channel 4 News: http://bit.ly/1sF6pOJ Laura Poitras #39; movie CITIZENFOUR captures the man at the centre of today #39;s Watergate moment - Edward Snowden - in a compelling story of ...

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Exclusive: Laura Poitras on the Edward Snowden documentary | Channel 4 News - Video


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