I seem to recall thought processes of just how hard it would be to
actually recover information from such a tape without intimate knowledge
of exactly how the tape was created and the record layout(s) of the
tape.
Add in the propriety nature of tools such as DFDSS (and equivalent),
many of us considered the tape of little commercial value to anyone
other than the owner. That is, the cost of brute force data recovery
would be far above any possible gain.
Unlike PC's, the information proper is stored without any properties or
descriptors that would, for example, identify a character string as a
SSN, phone number, time stamp, etc.
The tapes were, for most reasonable purposes and definitions,
'encrypted'. Without the 'keys' (creation trail and layouts), the data
is useless. Of course, the data could always be recovered just like any
encryption scheme can be broken given enough resources.
Now I know things change, and it would be very difficult to convince an
auditor otherwise, but am I very far off?
Best of the season...
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Jeffrey Deaver
Sent: Friday, December 23, 2005 3:07 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: ABN Tape - Found
..snip
Of course, it could always go the other way too, but I believe I've
never
read of a documented case of data lost on a tape actually being used for
identify theft or the like.
Jeffrey Deaver, Senior Analyst, Systems Engineering
651-665-4231
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