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Re: Access to Storage and Communication Keys
On Tue, Jun 10, 1997 at 12:12:36PM -0700, Phil Helms wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Jun 1997, Bill Stewart wrote:
>
> > and you have potentially decent business reasons for backup
> > of storage keys, but that's only the case if you're not using
> > a sufficiently flexible cryptosystem and are using key backup
> > instead of data backup, which is really the preferred approach anyway.)
>
> I could envision situations where you wouldn't want to backup plaintext,
> but only ciphertext. In those situations, key backup would also be
> necessary. This would require the use of passphrases or some other
> tokens to utilize the backed up keys.
If you have data you wish to guard from disclosure I think that in
most circumstances you want to back up ciphertext. It is a *lot*
cheaper to secure a piece of paper with a passphrase on it (in a safe
deposit box, for example) than it is guard a gigabyte of backup tapes.
--
Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited",
[email protected] the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html