Encryption at Rest #9
Description
@alexsmithRTI : This is for AFTER the hosting migration, but I'm recording it here so that it doesn't get overlooked. Here are the relevant email excerpts:
- Ben, 11/7/2016: In the email below from about a year ago, you said "I believe that the data on at least the SQL Server database is encrypted at rest." Could you confirm this? It relates to an MI data request I'm putting in this week, and potentially to Roger's budgeting for this year's work: MI requires that student data be encrypted at rest, so if we're not currently doing this then I'd like to lobby for it being something we introduce. (Your message from last November goes on to say that you're not sure about encryption of the Postgres database. At the moment I'm not concerned about that one.)
- Alex, 11/10: So we are not currently using sql server’s encryption at rest feature, but can relatively easily be enabled, as here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb934049.aspx . If we’re adding MI data to Evaluation Engine, we can turn this on. If it’s for the MI instance of the tool, then it could be enabled on that server and not on ours (but we should anyways).
- Ben, 11/10 : Thanks Alex! Since there are some implications for future operations, if not major ones, I'm looping Roger in also. (Roger, MI does impose the formal requirement that data be "encrypted at rest". Even if other states don't specifically ask for it, it may be advantageous to offer it proactively.)
- Roger, 11/10: Two questions: 1. Why are we not using the "encrypted as rest" feature? 2. You say that this feature "can relatively easily be enabled". What does that mean? Specifically, how much of your time would be involved. and would we experience any downtime when setting up that feature?
- Alex, 11/10: 1. I'm not sure why we’re not using it now, it could be that we just never got around to enabling it. 2. As for how long it would take, I would say a couple hours. Mostly to fix whatever doesn’t work correctly on the first try and test that it works.
- Roger, 11/11: Alex, from the standpoint of efficiency, which of the following would make more sense: 1. Encrypting the data at rest now, before we migrate to new servers. 2. Waiting until we migrate, and then applying the encryption either during or after things are being set up.
- Alex, 11/11: It might be easier to do after we migrate to the new servers, if only because we’d basically have to just redo setting up the encryption. I don’t think there’s much risk right now, but it wouldn’t take too long to set up, if we have to.
- Roger, 11/11: Makes sense. We'll do it after the migration.