[Novalug] VA Health records held ransom

ethan@757.org ethan@757.org
Wed May 6 13:33:48 EDT 2009


> Actually, it does seem worse.  Most sysadmins wouldn't have
> seven separate tape drives side by side, each with one tape
> permanently mounted in it.  This seven-disk case is exactly
> the kind of setup that makes the original (health records)
> problem possible:  all of the backups are online at all times,

Most would have an autoloader with a weeks worth of backups in it. Weather 
it be a Quantum ATL, a StorageTek, or something lower rent like Spectra 
Logic or one of the many other vendors of libraries.

Tape technology hasn't kept up.

> which means one remote break-in can destroy both the live data
> and all of the backups, plus there is no provision for physically
> taking any of the backup copies elsewhere beyond the length
> of the USB cable, which means one small electrical fire (or one

You COULD do usb over fiber. No one said how important the data was on the 
drives? Do you know there was no other backups?

At NASA there was no backup for our 21TB SAN... because it would be very 
expensive to do so. More expensive than just regenerating all the data 
from the 3 copies stored locally in the STK Silo (1 copy somewhere else). 
But from a simple standpoint, it looked like we were ready to loose 21TB 
of data.

> flood from a faulty ceiling sprinkler) could kill all of the
> equipment at once.  Using some kind of removable media, they

But when the sprinkler breaks the 30 seconds of air primed in the lines 
give the PDU's time to shutdown and electronics to discharge, so the 
drives will be salvageable?

> really could obtain a useful improvement in data security by
> just ejecting the tapes after use and storing them in another
> room in a fire-resistant, water-resistant file cabinet.

But what if the earth is destroyed? They should be fired by rocket to the 
moon, our true, offsite storage site.




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