Jonathan Thornburg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > A further point: Do you really want the granularity of your encryption > to be "one key per disk"? I much prefer a cryptographic file system > which lets me have separate keys for separate categories of information > (eg one key for my tax forms, a different key for company-confidential > project stuff, a different key for old love letters, still another one > for My Secret Plan For World Domination, etc etc). These might all > live on the same laptop, but they probably need quite different key > policies.
I think that usability would make any such scheme outright impractical. People can't keep track of one key -- keeping track of a dozen would be rather difficult. Perhaps there are marginal benefits to being able to use different policies for different parts of the system, but it seems to me that the problems would far outweigh any benefits. This is doubly true in a single user environment where there is no issue with different subsets of users needing to see different subsets of the data. It is far simpler to simply use whatever key refreshment policy makes sense for the most secure information on the file system and to use one key. A system that is actually used beats a "better" system that is never used every time. Perry --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]