What a newsroom police raid teaches us about encrypting our devices
What a newsroom police raid teaches us about encrypting our devices
Police raid on Marion County Record underscores digital security threats to media orgs.
Summary
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The Marion County Record newsroom in Kansas was raided by police, who seized two cellphones, four computers, a backup hard drive, and reporting materials.
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A computer seized was most likely unencrypted. Law enforcement officials hope that devices seized during a raid are unencrypted, as this makes them easier to examine.
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Modern iPhones and Android phones are encrypted by default, but older devices may not be.
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Desktop computers typically do not have encryption enabled by default, so it is important to turn this on manually.
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Use strong random passwords and keep them in a password manager.
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During the raid, police seized a single backup hard drive. It is important to have multiple backups of your data in case one is lost or stolen.
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You can encrypt USB storage devices using BitLocker To Go on Windows, or Disk Utility on macOS.
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All major desktop operating systems support Veracrypt, which can be used to encrypt entire drives.
Main Take-aways
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Encrypt your devices, drives, and USBs.
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Use strong random passwords and password manager.
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Have multiple backups.
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Encrypted cloud backup! They can take my drives, but the data is encrypted on the cloud.
The cloud is someone else's computer, they can take that too.
Sure, but there's not much they can do about it if things are properly encrypted, for example using DKE on M365.
properly encrypted, for example using DKE on M365.
Wouldn't call that properly encrypted... but either way, when they lock you out "pending an investigation", that's no longer a backup.
Get a storage space. put servers in it. profit.
I considered this a while back but it is hard to find a place that stuff doesn't get stolen from and has power available in some form.
That puts a wrench into that plan