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Having just discovered the existence of hardware encryption (SED SSD) which I like, I also found that stealing a laptop whose SSDs are self-encrypted becomes far less tempting than stealing a backup of that/those drives which will be in the clear (for the CPU to process) and easier to physically access. How could those backups be protected? (I anticipate there must be a generally-accepted solution to this). Or is it necessary to backup to external SED SSDs?
Are "Internet" backups a good option? (Backing up to an external site of SED SSD on the Internet.)
I prefer to do my backups locally; I point them to external media, that is, hard drives attached to other computers or external hard drives which do nothing but hold backups.
The important thing about backups is this: if they are not to external media, they are not backups, they are replications.
I am not a fan of third party "clouds." If they are not under my control, I will not blindly trust them. I am a cynical old curmudgeon, but I find that too many outfits have based their business models on selling user data for profit.
Of course, if you have a secure VPS out there somewhere, one that is under your control and from a trustworthy provider, that could be an option, but, if it's third party, remember that it could go away at any time.
Simplest would be an external SED.
However once the data is read off the (encrypted) source drive it is in the clear - over the bus, into memory. If you have a compromised machine, all your efforts will all be for naught. Not likely maybe, but possible.
I would go with the external SED - the exposure is (extraordinarily) low and the benefits significant. I don't use cloud based options, but that is personal choice.
I think the best is when you write a simple bash script for backup with rsync.
You can save your files to a remote host or a Mounted disk/s.. or where you want.
I personally back my data up to a container on an external HDD which is encrypted with VeraCrypt. If anyone manages to steal the external HDD, good luck to them.
Backup software can usually encrypt the files that it saves to the backup volume.
The backup daemon should also run as a user which has access to the files that are to be backed-up but that writes the data to a directory that only it can access. Other system users should not be allowed to access the backup repository, much less alter anything on it.
In my view, encrypting the volume is primarily geared at making a stolen laptop useless. Stolen laptops have been found thrown away in airport trash-cans with the hard drives taken out. The industrial spies (presumably) only wanted the data and maybe the SSL keys.
Last edited by sundialsvcs; 01-09-2018 at 11:16 AM.
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