Michael N. Dundas

http://www.flickr.com/photos/room929/428260081/

Nicole Garton-Jones submitted on slaw.ca today a post entitled Practicing Law on the Road: the Role of the Cloud and the Emergence of the Virtual Law Firm.  In it she highlights the idea of working remotely and using VoIP, Cloud computing and virtual desktops along with your PDA and laptop devices.  Especially when it comes to law firms, my experience is they are often slower to adopt to technological changes that other industries due to a combination of tradition and general need to follow government laws, and procedures enforced by their professional organizations.  It is nice to see a lawyer promoting these technologies, I think that is great for the legal industry.

In her post, she discusses cloud computing, laptops and PDAs and touches on the security.  I feel that the security needs to be given a much more serious discussion.  My experience consulting with small companies and law firms is that they typically do not give security enough time, consideration, or expertise before choosing a technology path.  There are many reasons for this, cost, resources, and time being the main factors.  It is usually discussed when a laptop with sensitive data goes missing, someone realizes there is a keystroke logger on their system, or their server data has been compromised and is leaking onto the Internet bypassing the firewall, IDS, anti-virus, and notice of the system administrators or third party companies hired to provide system administration and security.

Cloud computing offers many advantages and cost savings to companies.  It also brings with it the concern of your data being stored off-site, out of your direct control.  With large cloud computing vendors such as Amazon and Google, your data could be across the world in a foreign country and the laws that apply to the protection of that data probably differ from those in your home country.  This has been a topic of discussion for a while now in the Cloud computing arena.  One of the suggestions is to use a ‘private’ cloud.  This is typically a cloud that you own or have more control over where the data is stored.  For example, Canadian Cloud offers a guarantee that “…data are safe and secure on hardware located in Canada, and subject only to Canadian laws and regulations..”  This resolves international issues when it comes to control of data and is appealing.  However, there is much more to consider before choosing a provider.  While Amazon, Google and other large companies are international, they also have the size to attract security professionals that are very knowledgeable and current.  They can afford the resources to properly monitor against attacks to steal your data.  Google recently publicized the discovery of China conducing espionage on its systems.  Will a provider of a smaller cloud offering have the resources to detect such attacks?  If you install your own cloud, do you have the resources to hire individuals capable of detecting these types of attacks?  One could argue that not using Amazon or Google is less secure and you have more risk exposure.  My point is that companies and firms need to consciously assess these decisions based on the sensitivity of the information they are thinking about storing on a cloud system.

Laptop security is still as important weather the cloud is present or not.  It makes sense for an attacker to go after the weakest link and that is almost always the end user device.  Although one may suggest that all the information is on the virtual desktop on the cloud, there may be cases where data needs to be pulled locally.  If this is the case and the data is sensitive you will require encryption.  Even if data is not stored on the laptop ever and therefore there is no need for encryption and the management tasks it brings, installation of malware that will capture keystrokes and gather screen shots is invaluable on the laptop of a lawyer involved in a sensitive case.  This software exists in many places and is easily obtained and deployed.  Proper user device security does not go away.

Between iPhone and Blackberry, currently the Blackberry is much more secure than an iPhone.  Blackberry has the infrastructure including BES servers which allow enforcement of detailed security policies along with a robust management architecture.  BES servers offer the ability to remotely wipe a lost Blackberry as well as the ability to track the location of the phone remotely.  The Blackberry device itself has the ability to wipe all data via a menu option or by simply entering the wrong password a configurable number of times.   By comparison, the current iPhone can have a password in place, but bypassing it is easy once you have the physical device and security policies can be easily overridden by the user of the device.  I fully expect the iPhone to improve in this area as it targets the business market, but currently this is the general state of security with the iPhone.  A company that deploys iPhones or Blackberries needs to consider the type of data on these devices and the required security.  While many users prefer the iPhone over the Blackberry, you are making a security decision when you make this decision as well.  Best to make it consciously and understand the risks you are assuming with your firm and clients data.

Companies and firms need to consciously assess the security requirements of their data independent of any one technology.  Once this is completed, choose and deploy solutions and services that meet those requirements balancing off risk, cost, and convenience.  While there is no such thing as 100% security, you can consciously minimize this exposure, and manage the risk.

How confident is your company or firm that data stored on your local servers, cloud infrastructure, laptops, PDAs and other devices is secure, and can not be extracted or viewed without proper authorization?  If your data was being extracted or viewed without authorization would your security team detect it?  If not, why not?

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I came across this post on high school student readiness for university.  What interested me were the questions  towards the end of the article.  “What is an author?”, “Who has the authority or expertise to speak?”, “How is trust established?”, “What counts as evidence?”  I would love to know if there is a consensus on these.  I suspect not, and I suspect there never will be.

I know some  computer scientists that present great research at conferences, do amazing work, and are really smart.  Many of them do not have formal schooling but are ’self taught’.  Are they experts?  In my eyes within their subject area they sure are.  I have no issues referencing them or their work as supporting evidence for a particular problem or project I am working on or involved with.    Anyone that implies they are not qualified because they haven’t published papers through ‘official’ channels is just being silly.

Similar to Music.  There are people such as Jann Arden that I believe have no formal music training (she indicated this once at a concert I attended).    I on the other hand took many years of formal piano.  If anyone was to take my knowledge of music over Jann Arden due to my ‘formal’ training, I’d seriously question their intelligence.

Is Wikipedia bad?  For me it depends on who writes and edits the particular article in question.  How do you verify someones credentials?  Not sure.  Personally, I just assess for myself and use common sense.  For example, if there is a article on a musical concept that Jann Arden or others in her area of expertise agree with and support then personally I would be fine using it as a reference.

I am glad the questions above are being discussed.  I’d love to listen in on the discussions.

“There is a distinct difference between secrecy and privacy.” – Alanis Morissette, Interview

I heard that quote a few years ago, it is one that has always stuck with me.  Personally, I am a big proponent of respecting privacy, but secrecy is an entirely different thing.  Where the line is drawn depends on each individual unfortunately.

Previously, when doing security consulting for businesses, one of the common themes was the employers ability to access email, files, voice mail and even phone conversations of an employee if they felt it was necessary.   Taking email for example, most employers feel they have a right to read any email that enters or leaves their company network, regardless of whether it is private in nature or not.  I have been given arguments that the employer owns the equipment and the network and are ultimately responsible and must have the ability to do these types of activities if they feel it necessary.   I had a discussion with an individual that was a senior executive that felt very strongly in favour of this opinion.  I then gave him a scenario where he was collaborating with another company in a different province and the conversations were around some trade secrets or business that was sensitive in nature.  I asked him if it would it be okay if his upstream ISP or one of the ISPs along the path captured and read his email correspondence with this company.  His response was an absolute ‘no’ it would not be okay.  I then stated that it is the ISPs network, they are ultimately responsible for the security and integrity of it.  Two things happened.  First he didn’t like the conversation anymore, that became very obvious.  Second, he made some statement about it being ‘different’ and changed the topic.  This made me realize that  everyone wants secrecy for themselves, but do not want anyone to have secrets kept from them.  Yes, a very obvious statement, but I think it also comes down to that simple concept which drives all these debates, discussions, and laws or lack of laws.

So why am I bringing this up?   Michael Hyatt has a blog that I read regularly.  I don’t know him personally, but he seems like a good guy and has some insightful entries.  He recently commented on the idea of using Gmail for his business email. I completely understand why he is considering it, and would argue that if you are a small or medium size business it could make complete sense financially and logistically.   What about the privacy implications?  What if Google has a security breech and data is lost or stolen?  What if Google is late to apply a security patch? What if there is a security hole that Google isn’t aware of but a criminal is?   If there is a legal issue with a company in Germany that is using a cloud computing application who’s laws apply for data access?  Suppose you accept the terms of service and policies around Gmail and choose to use their service for email.  A year later, you change your mind and wish to have all your email transferred to a different server or service.  Can you do this?  Will all your data be erased from Gmail servers and their backup systems so they could never retrieve it again?  Do you care?

I think technology, innovation, and the internet are awesome.  But I also think it is very important that individuals and businesses realize and think seriously about the privacy implications.  Some suggest this is pointless.   With GoogleDocs, Gmail, online CRM systems, and the multitude of other cloud computing applications available and in use, we have already made this decision even if it is somewhat unconciously as a society.   I feel this statement may be right, and that makes me sad.

I recently read this post regarding backups on slaw.ca, which is a legal blog site. An individual took the initiative to research and purchase some backup software only to be disappointed at the effort it took to configure and get running correctly. This got me thinking about my experience over the years with backup and restore procedures, being in emergencies having to rely on backups, and most importantly the expectations of clients.

Many small and medium sized businesses think that as long as they have a backup they can restore a system easily. While it is true that having good backup procedures can give a business confidence that it will have all its data should a failure occur. The idea that in a disaster, one can be back up and running quickly because these backup procedures in place is typically not the case. Backup is different from disaster recovery.

I recently assisted a law firm that exemplified the problems and perceptions associated with backups. The client, a law firm had a server that was about 5 years old. It started having memory errors and crashing suddenly. The obvious thing to do was to replace the bad memory, However, attempting to do so was not trivial. The memory type the server used was no longer available. Attempting to locate memory that was compatible with the mother board was unsuccessful. It was decided to order a new server. The server took 2 weeks to arrive. Of course once it did arrive, it is not a simple restore the backup and go. The operating system has to be installed and configured. In this particular case the operating system was Windows 2003 server. Once the O/S is installed, you typically have to re-install the applications. The reasons for installing the applications are that you have to install the backup software so you can actually run the restore process. Very few applications will just ‘restore’ to a disk, especially in a Windows environment. In Windows environments, applications typically make use of a central repository called the registry. The registry contains everything from configuration settings of applications, locations of files, user configuration settings and the list goes on. Although you can backup and restore a registry and most decent backup software does this, the registry is reasonably dynamic entity. As such, it is rarely if ever a clean restore and more often than not, it is quicker and easier to re-install the applications which re-create the registry entries then to do a restore of the registry and subsequent debugging. In this particular case, since it is a new server, there were different drivers that needed to be installed, which affected both the files on the backup as well as the entries in the registry. Finally we had to restore the data files, databases and test. The whole process took an entire weekend.

I have consulted for companies that take images of the hard drives in an attempt to solve this problem. They typically do this at specific intervals, once every few weeks or few months. Should a system fail, the idea is they can re-image the drives which restores the operating system, registy, and applications the configurations. Next, they restore the latest backup on top and everything will be back to normal. Although you can image a live drive, to ensure the integrity of an image you should take the drive offline, or at least put it in a read-only mode during the imaging process. This is typically not feasible in today’s environments. System need to be constantly up and on-line. Even if you have a mechanism to successfully image (vmware has a process to do this), chances are drivers will change and be different if you have to replace a server or motherboard, or a drive size will be different affecting the ease with which the drive image can be restored.

The only effective implementation of a disaster recovery solution is one by large institutions. At one financial instituion for example, they had duplicate systems, memory, CPU, and drives all stored in case their was a failure. Everything was imaged as well as data being backed up to a central backup system. The ability to restore a system was tested and documented at regular intervals. This type of redundancy and rigor costs money and time, both things that are difficult to come by for most small businesses.

Backups are not the same as disaster recovery. In times of systems failure or worse, businesses need to be very cognisant of the amount of time it can take to fully recover and get systems, applications, and functions back to normal. In the event of a disaster it is important that business understand the true amount of time they will likely be down and plan accordingly.