I hope you all don't mind my starting this series off. I think this would work best if we pass the virtual baton around to a different person after each topic. We can queue up a list of topics on the wiki so people know what's coming next.

The first topic is encryption in preservation storage. I am thinking about hardware or software or file encryption primarily imposed by the repository (but whether or not you accept content encrypted by others is also interesting). I am thinking less about encrypting for transport (e.g. https). Say what you want about it but I'll pose some questions to get you thinking about it.



*         Do you have any opinions on it? What are your reasons for your opinions (gut feelings are OK)?

*         What kinds of problems do you think it might create in the future?

*         Do you have any current requirements to do this (laws, policies)? What are the conditions under which you need to encrypt? Do you know of any upcoming requirements for you to do this?

*         If you do it what technique(s)/strategies do you use? Do you isolate encrypted content from non-encrypted content?

*         Do you know of any relevant studies/papers, etc. about this topic?

Someone proposed that we keep each topic discussion to around 2 weeks so let's see if we've said what we want to by March 2. We can always extend this one since there was no advance notice of the topic.

Thanks,
Andrea

Andrea Goethals
Digital Preservation and Repository Services Manager
Harvard Library Office for Information Systems
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(617) 495-3724


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