13.6. Securing Backup Media

It makes no sense to secure the system if you leave the backup media unsecured. The backup media store all of the main data from your computer, and if they fall into wrong hands there will be no need to break into the computer.

In one company I witnessed the procedure, by which confidential data from a secure server were copied hourly to a simple user computer configured to the default settings that could be compromised within 5 minutes.

You should approach the business of securing backup media with all due responsibility. The simplest way to secure the media is to store them in a safe. But a better way is to encrypt the backup archive before copying it to a medium. You can use the OpenSSH package for this by executing the following command:

 /usr/bin/openssl des -in /home/backup.tar.gz -out /home/backup.sec 

This will create the backup.sec file, which should be the one to write to a medium. Afterwards, don't forget to delete backup.tar.gz and backup.sec from the computer.

When restoring the backup archive, it first has to be decrypted as follows :

 /usr/bin/openssl des -d -in /home/backup.sec \ -out /home/backup.tar.gz 

After the archive has been decrypted, the files can be restored as usual.