180 likes | 192 Views
Learn practical aspects of handling confidential tobacco product information following EMTOC instructions provided by the Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL). This includes installation of necessary software, such as TrueCrypt for secure data storage, and important security measures to ensure data protection.
E N D
Practical aspects in handling confidential tobacco product information in accordance to the EMTOC instructions Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) Andreas Butschke
The main EMTOC software is available via internet - a internet browser is required For the access to the web portal software for the card reader has to be installed once For the secure storage of downloaded data from the EMTOC system to the personal computer the installation of the encryption software TrueCrypt is required Required software for regulators
Open Source software (no license fees) No special hardware is required Flexible use, also for Thin Clients or USB flash drives Available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems Once installed with administrator rights it can be used with normal user rights TrueCrypt - benefits
True Crypt - how it works After starting the software TrueCrypt it is possible to create or to open an already existing encrypted area. The encrypted area is saved at the hard disk as file (container). After this file was opened (mounted) by TrueCrypt it appears to the user as a volume like a hard drive or USB flash drive. That means several files can be saved in this volume and files can directly be loaded and edited on this volume. If the volume is mounted the data stored in this volume is accessible to (all) computer or network users in the same way as other files that are stored at this computer. The data is only protected, if the volume is dismounted! The volume will be automatically dismounted, if the computer is turned off (not in the idle state) over the shut down procedure or by force (unplug).
Open TrueCrypt Press ‘Create Volume‘ Select ‘Create a standard TrueCrypt volume‘ (NEXT) Create volume if not existing
AES or Twofish are accepted as highly secure Select encryption method
e.g. between 200 and 1000 MB Specify volume size
‘Format‘ means that the file will be filled completely with random data Exit after format was finished Generating random data
Open TrueCrypt Select a free volume letter (e.g. K:) Select file from pull-down list (history) or with file manager Press ‘Mount‘ button Open existing volume
Mounted volume will be listed You can close the window with ‘Exit‘ Please close the volume after work has been finished with the ‘Dismount‘ button Successful mounting
The encrypted volume can be accessed with the Windows Explorer or with each other software (save as...) Working with the mounted volume
Open TrueCrypt before downloading confidential data Save the downloaded data directly and soleley to the TrueCrypt volume Close the volume (dismount) if you are not working with the data Open the volume only for storage or evaluation of the confidential data How to work with TrueCrypt
Software and documentation (e.g. Beginner‘s Tutorial) is online available Software web site
The encyption is as secure as the password! Very bad (Score 5): project Bad (Score 20): emtocproject + at least 10 characters + character sequence not contained in commond word lists (emtoc) Weak (Score 40): EmTocProject + upper/lower case characters (a-z and A-Z) Good (Score 80): EmToc-Project#2000* + numbers (0-9) + special characters (-+.,;:_#/*%&?${}[]() ) Strong (Score >80): EmToc-Prjct#2001* df87ú§,ä + special language characters (öäüéàèÖÄÜÉÀÈç) + no repeats (000) + longer Crucial point: password
Be sure that the virus scanner ist up-to-date Delete the cache memory of the internet browser Close the browser software after access to the EMTOC database Before working with office tools, deactivate the auto-save function in menu ‘Options‘ or define the save path to the encrypted volume (this will cause errors if you are referring to a volume that is not mounted) After working with office tools or other software, empty the recycle bin of the computer Further security aspects for the user