CASA # 4

Nasa to encrypt data after its latest laptop loss

Article Analysis 2

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20343745

Topic: Legal

US space agency Nasa has ordered that the data on all its laptops must be encrypted, after losing another one of its portable computer

The social/ethical concern affected in this article is security because “sensitive personally identifiable information” was lost when a person robbed an employee’s laptop.

The primary stakeholder in this case is the NASA agency and the IT system involved is the encryption project they plan to do. They decided to encript all the laptops due to the numerous cases in which several workers’ laptops were stolen.

The encryption system functions as the following:

Input: Authorized workers are able to access the laptop’s information when entering a password with a keyboard

Process: If the password is correct, it decodes the ciphertext of the laptop which uses a decryption algorithm. If not, the person should not be able to determine anything about the original message for it will be encrypted until he or she introduces the correct decryption key.

Storage: The agency’s database keeps the  secret decryption keys in order to reconize and allow them to access in any of its computers.

Output: After introducing the secret decryption key, the person will be allowed to see the information clearly. Otherwise, he only won’t understand anything.

The encryption system will protect NASA’s information from stealers and hackers because if a thief gets a laptop from a worker, even if he hacks the user’s password, he won’t be able to decode the decryption key and as a result, he won’t be able to understand the information in the laptop. This means that encrypting the agency’s information will provide security to the agency.

The greatest impacts that relevant stakeholders will have are:

NASA will be more secure and they will protect better their information from stealers and hackers when imposing encryption to all their workers’ laptops and banning the transport of the agency’s information in other devices, such as cell phones and tablets.

NASA’s workers will be under a strict surveillance and they will have more limitations than before. They won’t be allowed to use any tool but laptops as tools at work’s affairs. 

Tablet producers will be affected from NASA’s prohibition to use tablets at work because the employees that have tablets will stop using them and those ones that were thinking to buy a new one will buy a laptop instead.

The best solution I see to this problem is the one that the agency thought about: encrypting the agency’s information and hardware. However, I would also impose NASA’s workers to purchase trackable hardware or to incorporate a GPS application to their laptops so if they are stolen, NASA would be able to track their location.