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Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

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Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#181

Post by littlestymaar »

ncruces wrote: post #124
miken123 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because these companies never lose data, like during some lightning strikes, oh wait: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33989384 As a government you should not be putting your stuff in an environment under control of some other nation, period. That is a completely different issue and does not really relate to making backups.

“The BBC understands that customers, through various backup technologies, external, were able to recover all lost data.” You backup stuff. To other regions.

But the Korean government didn't backup, that's the problem in the first place here…

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#182

Post by freehorse »

DarkmSparks wrote: post #161
fabian2k wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using the cloud would have been the easiest way to achieve the necessary redundancy, but by far not the only one. This is just a flawed concept from the start, with no real redundancy.

But not security. And for governmental data security is a far more important consideration. not losing data and keeping untrusted parties out of your data is a hard problem, that "cloud" aka "stored somewhere that is accessible by agents of a foreign nation" does not solve.

As OP says, cloud is not the only solution, just the easiest. They should probably have had a second backup in a different building. It would probably require a bit more involvement, but def doable.

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#183

Post by _2d30 »

littlestymaar wrote: post #180
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As a government you should not be putting your stuff in an environment under control of some other nation, period. Why? If you encrypt it yourself before transfer, the only possible control some_other_nation will have over you or your data is availability.

First of all, you cannot do much if you keep all the data encrypted on the cloud (basically just backing things up, and hope you don't have to fetch it given the egress cost). Also, availability is exactly the kind of issue that a fire cause…

Yeah backups would’ve been totally useless in this case. All South Korea could’ve done is restore their data from the backups and avoid data loss.

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#184

Post by exe34 »

g-b-r wrote: post #163
stogot wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? If the region is in country, encrypted, and with proven security attestations validated by third parties, a backup to a cloud storage would be incredibly wise. Otherwise we might end up reading an article about a fire burning down a single data center

And which organization has every file, from each of their applications using the cloud, encrypted *before* it is sent to the cloud?

They're talking about backups. you can absolutely send an updated copy every night.

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#185

Post by otterley »

littlestymaar wrote: post #172
kristianc wrote: post #95

The government official who insisted that commercial AWS/GCP/Azure couldn't possibly be trusted with keeping the information will be keeping their head low for a few days then... "The Interior Ministry explained that while most systems at the Daejeon data center are backed up daily to separate equipment within the same center and to a physically remote backup facility, the G-Drive’s structure did not allow for extern…

> The government official who insisted that commercial AWS/GCP/Azure couldn't possibly be trusted with keeping the information They were still right though: it's absolutely clear without an ounce of doubt that whatever you put on an US cloud is being accessible by the US government, who can also decide to sanction you and deprive you from your ability to access the data yourself. Not having backups is entirely retard…

The U.S. Government can’t decrypt data for which it does not possess the key (assuming the encryption used is good).

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#186

Post by shakna »

stogot wrote: post #127
eCa wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree completely that it's absolute wild to run such a system without backups. But at this point no government should keep critical data on foreign cloud storage.

Why not? If the region is in country, encrypted, and with proven security attestations validated by third parties, a backup to a cloud storage would be incredibly wise. Otherwise we might end up reading an article about a fire burning down a single data center

Microsoft has already testified that the American government maintains access to their data centres, in all regions. It likely applies to all American cloud companies.

America is not a stable ally, and has a history of spying on friends.

So unless the whole of your backup is encrypted offline, and you trust the NSA to never break the encryption you chose, its a national security risk.

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#187

Post by Terr_ »

elcapitan wrote: post #139
Titan2189 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it. Can you please explain the reference?

That's an "Office Space" reference, in which a grumpy employee burns down the IT company building.

Perhaps extra-relevant to a story about data-loss, Milton was an employee who fell through the cracks in a broken corporate bureaucracy.

His was supposedly laid off years ago, but nobody actually stopped his paycheck, so he kept coming in to work assuming he was still employed, getting shuffled into increasingly-abusive working environments by callously indifferent managers who assume he's somebody else's problem.

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#188

Post by [deleted] »

odie5533 wrote: post #156
ivape wrote: post #86

I mean ... was making backups on the backlog at least? Can they at least point to the work item that was going to get done soonish ?

It got pushed a couple sprints and we've got it on the plan for next quarter as long as no new features come in before then.

[deleted]

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#189

Post by WhyNotHugo »

Frost1x wrote: post #137
redwood wrote: post #117

S. Korea has the most backward infosec requirements. It's wild

Having just visited South Korea last year, one thing that sort of caught me off guard was the lack of Google Maps or other major direction system. I wasn’t aware but turns out anything considered “detailed mapping” infrastructure has to be ran stored and on South Korean soil, probably lots of other requirements. So you’re stuck with some shotty local mapping systems that are just bad. There may be a point in time it…

Several other countries have similar requirements with regards to storing and serving maps locally.

If you take a moment to think about it, what's weird is that so many countries have simply resorted to relying on Google Maps for everyday mapping and navigation needs. This has become such a necessity nowadays that relying on a foreign private corporation for it sounds like a liability.

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