John E. Hadstate wrote:

> "Terry Ritter" <ritter@ciphersbyritter.com> wrote in message
> news:1123531810.378584.154410@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> 
>
>
> Suppose I have a database containing a mixture of Secret and
> Top Secret messages.  This database must be backed-up daily
> to CD's.  Both the message database and the CD's are very
> much in harm's way and the potential exists that the
> operators could be killed before they have a chance to
> destroy the CD's.  They might be immersed in sea water for a
> while, but a little distilled water will fix that (the CD's,
> not the operators).
>
> Compressing, encrypting and backing-up the database takes 3
> hours with a highly optimized implementation of AES-256.
> The "Multiple Encryption" you are promoting sounds like it
> would come out being at least 10 times slower.
>

You are ignoring the fact that speed is not always a primary consideration.

>
> These are your choices: daily backups with no encryption
> that takes one-and-a-half hours, daily backups with AES-256
> that takes 3 hours, daily backups with Ritter's Multiple
> Encryption that takes 16+ hours.  From where I stand, a
> fast, adequate encryption system that's used beats a slow,
> adequate one that's not used.
>

If the backups contained something that absolutely positively
needed to be kept secret, I would opt for the slower, stronger
approach (particularly if the backups ran unattended overnight).

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]