Data Protection

Those of you who have been following this blog over the past months, know that I am working in a big company. In fact Schlumberger is so big, they have policies and trainings for everything. Yes, even one for lifting boxes in a safe way. Therefore, it probably doesn’t surprise anyone that this company handling big, important, expensive data has certain policies for data protection. Just recently the worlds biggest oil company was subject to an attack Saudi Aramco – Facebook Post about security breach:

Now why am I writing about this?

This might just as well be something you should be worried about.
Protecting your data doesn’t just mean, protecting it from others, but also keeping it in a place that it doesn’t get lost. Yeah, probably almost anyone of us had some accident were data loss happened. Some external hard drive crashed or got stolen, your phone got lost, or something happened to your Desktop PC. From this point on we can probably say, that our Desktop PC is the safest from all of these devices. They’re not the most valuable item in your house and if a thief has the choice to either carry your customized high-end computer out of your apartment or some off-the-shelf flat screen, what’s it gonna be?
Far more vulnerable for getting lost, stolen or destroyed are modern laptops, phones, external drives and tablet PCs. They’re hyped and I myself am writing this article on a laptop in a train from Birmingham to London. There are even thieves specialized on theft of electronic equipment. I’m not trying to get you paranoid, but some actions might just help your valuable family photos be saved from vanishing.

This will be the starting point on a series of data protection in an age where security can barely hold pace with the demand of accessibility of data. Look at Dropbox for an instance. Dropbox is great for having your data everywhere, even your phone. But when it comes to security they have had a lot of issues where your data was accessible for anyoneHuffington Post on Dropbox leaving it wide open, spammers got email-adresses of the usersVenture Beat on Spamflood from Dropbox leak and passwords were leakedHuffington Post on Password leaks at Dropbox. However Dropbox seems to learn and hire some specialists to get the security side up to standards.TechCrunch on Dropbox getting help from security experts DropBox starts 2-factor authentification This will be the opportunity for you to take data security in your own hands, in small steps, so anyone can do it!
We will have some introductions to physically securing your data. But my main focus will be on the software and data part of this.
Yet again, I am no expert on this field. I do geophysics and I just happen to be a nerd that likes to play around with stuff. When I decrypt my fully encrypted dual boot laptop I always feel a bit like a nerdy James Bond. Maybe I can share some of this fascination with you.