Full Disk Encryption solutions selected for US Government use

Leichter, Jerry leichter_jerrold at emc.com
Mon Oct 8 18:48:43 EDT 2007


| A slightly off-topic question:  if we accept that current processes
| (FIPS-140, CC, etc) are inadequate indicators of quality for OSS
| products, is there something that can be done about it?  Is there a
| reasonable criteria / process that can be built that is more suitable?
Well, if you believe a talk by Brian Snow at the NSA - see
http://www.acsac.org/2005/papers/Snow.pdf - our whole process has to
change to get assurance, from the beginnings of the design all the
way through the final product.

I suspect he's right - but I'm also pretty sure that the processes
involved will always be too expensive for most uses.  They'll even be
too expensive for the cases where you'd think they best apply - e.g.,
in protecting large financial transactions.  An analysis of the costs
vs. the risks will usually end up with the decision to spend less and
spread the risks around, whether through insurance or higher rates
or other means.

We keep being told that inspection after the fact will give us more
secure systems.  It never seems to work.  You'd think that the
experience of, say, the US auto industry - which was taught by the
Japanese that you have to build quality into your entire process, not
inspect *out* lack of quality at the end - would give us some hint
that after-the-fact inspection is not the way to go.

Given all that ... a FIPS 140-2 certification is actually a pretty
reasonable evaluation.  It can be because it's trying to deal with
a problem that can be constrained to a workable size.  You know what's
supposed to go in; you know what's supposed to come out.  (This
still works better for hardware than for software, though.)  Where
FIPS 140-2 breaks down is that ultimately all it can tell you is
that some constrained piece of the system works.  But it tells you
nothing, and *can* tell you nothing, about whether that piece is
being used in a proper, secure way.  (Again, this is somewhat easier
with hardware, because the system boundaries are much more sharply
defined - and because of the inflexibility of hardware, they are also
much smaller.)  Beyond this is Common Criteria, which can easily be
more about paperwork than anything real.

Until someone comes up with a new way to approach the problem, my
guess is that we'll see more stuff moved into hardware, with limited
security definitions above the hardware that we can have some faith
in - but as little of real value to be said above that as there is
today.
							-- Jerry

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