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Transcript 14

One of the things, obviously, you need to consider when you are using encryption is who actually has a backup of the password you’re using for the encryption? Because actually if you’re the only person who knows that password, you want as few people to know that as possible but on the other hand if you’re the only person who knows it, if for some reason you forget it, you’ve got a huge problem yourself or if for some reason somebody has to, for an emergency purpose, access your data likely to happen without you being available, then how would that happen? What would happen if you suddenly became very ill or something like that and for some reason you don’t have to be accessed or something like that. What would you do?

Well, the way I’ve got around that is that I actually have a copy of the password in an envelope, which is sealed and signed across the seal, and given to my supervisors and one supervisor keeps it in a safe so should they absolutely have to access my data they can’t do it without getting special permission from IT services to get into my account which they would get in emergency situation but not otherwise, they can access the encryption and again, I think in my proposal I made it clear that they could have access to the data so the fact that someone else does have access to the encryption key, in this case I use an encryption password, does mean that it’s accessible.

It’s also quite... sort of, I haven’t forgotten the password yet but it is quite nice for me to know that there is a spare because the encryption algorithm I use, if I forget the password I can’t get in so it is kind of important that there is a backup somewhere but again you need to think very carefully about where’s that backup going to be kept and how’s it going to be kept secure. In my case, the supervisors know the directory it’s in, they know the password that the things, sort of, kept separately in a couple of envelopes so that’s the way that that can be accessed so I have a backup plan so if you’re using encryption you need a backup plan for getting to that encryption. You also need a securely held copy of what password you’re using but you need that kept with as few people as possible, preferably one or two.’

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PILOT - Writing a data management plan by Edina, University of Edinburgh modified by Marion Kelt, GCU is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Based on a work at http://datalib.edina.ac.uk/mantra/introduction.html