Switzerland Wants To Become the World's Data Vault 131
wiredmikey writes "Business for Switzerland's 55 data centers is booming. They benefit from the Swiss reputation for security and stability, and some predict the nation already famous for its super-safe banks will soon also be known as the world's data vault. For example, housed in one of Switzerland's numerous deserted Cold War-era army barracks, one high-tech data center is hidden behind four-ton steel doors built to withstand a nuclear attack — plus biometric scanners and an armed guard. Such tight security is in growing demand in a world shaking from repeated leaks scandals and fears of spies lurking behind every byte."
Swiss's NSA analog? (Score:5, Insightful)
What is to say that their agency similar to the NSA will not be over all the stored data like a fat kid over cupcakes? It is great intel, especially if it comes to economic or commercial stuff.
Where ever you put it (Score:3, Insightful)
Good luck keeping guys with tens of thousands of exploits out of it
Physical, sure. Data security? Not anymore. (Score:5, Insightful)
Spies don't have to crack them if they're financial based businesses like banks. Every time the IRS expresses an "interest" in the account information, they roll over on their backs. I would expect no less from them if any other three letter agency wanted more information, especially if any of those "interests" involved doing business with the US.
Glory to Arstotzka! (Score:3, Insightful)
Because no country existing outside of a dystopic novel has anything comparable to the NSA. Inb4 China: China's massive espionage ends at their borders, outside there it's just the usual, they don't even monitor WoW despite the risk of gnome terrorists.
Re:Glory to Arstotzka! (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, NSA may be more pervasive worldwide, but if you truly believe China's espionage efforts aren't also focused outside of their country, I know someone with some prime marshland you might be interested in.
Re:SLA agreements... (Score:5, Insightful)
Here in the US, in theory, the physical servers (and their SAN backends) should be blanked, but if not and the data passes through to another party, that party holding the servers owns that data free and clear. A bank's private records could be available as a torrent,
If the bank is adhering to regulations and standards; all the sensitive data such as account numbers should be encrypted at rest.
Preferably; all data in the vault should be stored with a storage layer encryption on top of that, such that only the legitimate client can operate on the data.
For anything that needs to be processed onsite --- hardware security modules should be used to decrypt data on the fly.
The bank should have legal ownership of the authorization tokens required to operate the hardware security modules, and perform decryption tasks on the bank's data.
There should be a third party required to supervise administration of the hardware tokens required to authenticate to the HSM, and ensure that the tokens and HSM units remain secure at all times, and are operated only with continuing approval of the tenants.
Why trust them with data when they sold out banks? (Score:4, Insightful)
I was from China ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, NSA may be more pervasive worldwide, but if you truly believe China's espionage efforts aren't also focused outside of their country, I know someone with some prime marshland you might be interested in.
Yes, China does spy on people.
But at the very least, China does not do that and then say to the world "The world should THANK US for keeping them safe".
I was from China. In fact, I ran away from China. I dislike China's communist party as much as anybody else, and I am a naturalized American citizen.
But still, fair is fair.
While what NSA did technically was not that much different from what others do (which includes democratic countries such as England, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and France), morally, the United States government has sunk lower than that of China !
China steals others secret but never pretend to be THE PROTECTOR, unlike the Hussein (aka Barry Soetoro) Barack Obama Administration of the United States of America !
Now, about that piece of marshland, I think you can keep it.