Previous Table of Contents Next


CONFIDENTIALITY

Confidentiality in this section refers to the facilities by which information is protected against unauthorized reading. To facilitate establishing adequate levels of protection for information, data trustees (owners) must provide a classification to all information. This classification is based on the level of damage to the enterprise that may result from allowing individuals to gain access to information that they do not need.

Mobile Employee Information Security Recommendations

Ensuring compliance with appropriate security procedures and practices depends not on the security tools that are provided but on the effectiveness of the security awareness program. Awareness contributes to the success of the effective information protection program. Exhibit 2 provides a baseline of awareness requirements for the mobile user. Posters in the organization’s facilities are very effective and are an important part of the overall awareness program. However, use of E-mail and articles in the organization’s internal communication media are more effective than posters with mobile users.

Software Considerations

Version Management. If the application software or database on the notebook is not the current version, the mobile user may create and transmit incorrect data into the organization’s record of reference databases. If this happens, the integrity of the databases may be damaged and inaccurate information may be given to a business partner.

Each time the mobile user connects into the organization’s network servers, a process should be performed to ensure that all of the software (both application and operating system) on the mobile client is current. The same is true for all data base subsets that are mirrored on the notebook. The organizations change control process should notify the synchronization process when production environment changes are made and should have the updates available when a remote connection is made. If the notebook does not have all the current software and data base data, the infrastructure servers must not accept information uploads until the software and database are synchronized. The mobile user must recreate the information before attempting to upload using the current versions of the processing environment.

When the mobile user connects into the infrastructure and determines that a download of updates is required, the user should have an option to delay the download. The user is not allowed to upload information to the server, but queries may be made. This is important if the user is with a customer and wants to obtain status information; if a potentially lengthy download takes place, the user would waste the customer’s time.

Encryption and Decryption. To date, encryption is the most effective security measure to ensure information confidentiality. One type of technology uses a two-part key in which the private key is kept by the owner and the public key is published. The recipient’s public key is used to encrypt the data, which can only be decrypted by the recipient’s private key. To reduce the computational overhead, encryption is often used to create a digital envelope that holds a DES encryption (symmetric) key and DES-encrypted data. Message nonrepudiation uses document hashing and digital signature as a means of verifying the message sender. This is accomplished by encrypting a message with the sender’s private key and letting others decrypt the message with the sender’s public key.

The major security concern is maintaining integrity and confidentiality of the keys. Each organization must devise a process to distribute the public keys to everyone who is involved in the encrypted messaging process, including customers and other business partners. The recommendation is to establish a comprehensive public- key data base on a central server that may be accessed by everyone (this means that it is located outside the security firewall) and to have each mobile user keep a subset of public keys on his or her notebook for major business partners.

Another concern is protecting corporate equity. Consideration must be given to the necessity for the corporation to decrypt messages when the owner of the private key is not available. One method may be to include the symmetric DES key (discussed in the previous encryption section) in an extractable format in the message archiving facility (discussed in the nonrepudiation segment). A tightly controlled process to extract the DES key would allow the message to be decrypted without compromising the private key of the originator. Right-to-privacy concerns are outweighed by corporate equity considerations, because company resources were used to create the messages.

NEW TECHNOLOGY CONSIDERATIONS

It is important to have an appreciation for new connectivity technologies so that users may determine their potential threats and vulnerabilities. By looking at what is coming, users should be able to develop the mitigating security measures before deploying the technology. Many security concerns exist, but very few proven answers are associated with emerging technologies. However, the technologist (and to some degree the mobile user) often wants to implement the technology quickly, before the technology itself has reached commercial strength.

PC Card. The unified standard that combines Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) standard and the Japan Electronic Industry Development Association (JEIDA) standard is called PC Card. The credit-card-sized devices take the form of memory cards, modems, and disk drives that can be plugged into slots in computers. The card’s security measures should be the same as those for the hard drive. Experience indicates that many users do not take the card out of the drive when it is not in use; therefore, passive encryption is recommended. For this reason, cards may be ineffective if used as a removable security lock. The card is effectively used in several applications, most notably as a removable modem.

Smart Cards. Although they are the size of an ordinary credit card, smart cards use an embedded processor that gives both the system designer and the system user a powerful authentication tool. Smart cards are a subset of the rapidly growing integrated circuit card industry.

Two types of smart cards exist: contact cards and contactless cards. The contact-type interface uses an eight-position contact located at one corner of the card. A contact card reader also uses a matching set of contact points to transfer information between the card and the reader. The contactless card does not come in direct contact with the card reader, but uses an inductive power coil and transmit and receive capacitor plates to transfer information to the contactless reader. AT&T’s contactless card product is essentially an 8-bit computer with a proprietary operating system and either 3K bytes or 8K bytes of user-accessible, nonvolatile memory inside the smart card.


Previous Table of Contents Next

Copyright © CRC Press LLC