[581] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
RE: Escrow agencies closed?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Rick Smith)
Sat Apr 19 13:23:03 1997
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 12:09:30 -0600
To: Larry Layten <larry@ljl.com>
From: smith@securecomputing.com (Rick Smith)
Cc: "cryptography@c2.net" <cryptography@c2.net>
At 10:40 AM 4/19/97, Larry Layten wrote:
>Rick,
>
>I believe that you will find that anyone using encryption for
>serious data processing and data storage will only do so if
>there a key recovery scheme.
Permit me to be a crypto heretic, but I don't think encryption is ready for
use in serious data storage and recovery applications. The problem isn't
the algorithms, it's the operational issues. It pretty much works for
communications and small scale protections (laptop copies of working
files), but careful people should keep "real" backups in plaintext and use
physical security. If you can keep your crypto keys physically secure, then
you have the technology to keep your plaintext data secure.
Rick.
