-: There are a lot of ways to store data in your network
and on your computers.
In addition to your internal hard drive,
most computers have the ability
to use removable media, as well.
Removable media comes in many different formats.
In the old days, we had our simple floppy disks.
Then we moved up to CDs, and then DVDs,
and those held a lot more information.
Next, we had external hard drives that plug in through USB.
And finally, we had USB thumb sticks,
which are very small but hold a ton of information.
When you're placing your information
onto one of these removable media formats
or external devices,
you have to make sure that it stays safe from prying eyes.
We want to ensure confidentiality.
To do this, we always want to encrypt our files.
You can do this in one of two ways.
On Windows 10, you can use BitLocker To Go,
which will allow you to encrypt files
using a software encryption.
Also, you could buy a USB thumb stick
that already has hardware encryption built in,
something like an IronKey USB shown here.
Some organizations are a little more paranoid though
and they want to ensure
that nothing gets out of their organization.
And they also want to make sure
that nothing gets into their organization.
To do that, they've implemented removable media controls.
These controls are technical limitations
that are placed on a system
in regards to the way the USB storage devices
and other media can be accessed.
For example, this can be done using technical controls
inside your group policies
by denying read access from USB drives
or denying write access to a CD or DVD.
In addition to these technical controls,
you also need to consider which administrative controls,
such as policies, you want to create
and guide those technical controls that are going to be used
inside your organization.
In addition to external devices and removable media,
we also can store our data on our networks
and we might do something called a NAS.
If we use a NAS, that's a Network Attached Storage device.
These storage devices connect directly
into your organization's network.
They often look like a big rack of hard drives
with a network cable coming out of the back of them.
Most of the time,
NAS systems are going to implement some form of a RAID array
that gives you high availability.
Because these devices need to be accessed at all times
because they're acting as file servers
for your organization,
this high availability is important.
Oftentimes, we'll take different NASs
and we'll connect them together
into what's known as a Storage Area Network or a SAN.
A SAN is a network designed
specifically to perform block storage functions
and it may consist of many NAS devices connected together.
Now, if you're using a single NAS device
in your organization or at your home,
there are three tips I want to give you
to make sure that you secure it properly.
First, always use data encryption.
If your NAS supports full disk data encryption,
you should turn it on and implement it.
Second, you should always use proper authentication.
These things are acting as file servers.
You want to make sure that it asks for credentials
such as a username and password
and that is individualized to each user
so no one is sharing access across the organization.
The third thing is to make sure you're logging access
to your NAS device.
This way, if something goes wrong,
you can go back and figure out
who was the last person who accessed the NAS?
Who downloaded those hundred terabytes worth of files?
And what may have gone wrong?
These are important things to know and without logs,
you won't be able to figure it out.