The Inner Circle

 View Only
Back to discussions
Expand all | Collapse all

5 Cybersecurity Lessons We Can Learn from Star Wars - Lesson 1: Help me encryption, you're my only hope

  • 1.  5 Cybersecurity Lessons We Can Learn from Star Wars - Lesson 1: Help me encryption, you're my only hope

    Posted Oct 13, 2021 02:15:00 PM
    Edited by Olivia Rempe Oct 13, 2021 02:16:26 PM

    Lesson 1: Help me encryption, you're my only hope

    To celebrate cybersecurity awareness month, I wanted to share some excerpts from an article titled     5 Cybersecurity Lessons We Can Learn from Star Wars. As someone who is brand new to the industry, I appreciate the examples used as they are related to a subject matter with which I am very familiar. I've also included some links to corresponding CSA research that further expands on these topics.


    Early in the film, Princess Leia hides some "information vital to the rebellion's survival," and a plea for help is addressed to Obi-Wan Kenobi inside R2-D2.


    When R2-D2 is in possession of Luke Skywalker on Tatooine, Luke accidentally stumbles across the message while cleaning the droid. However, only a small preview of it plays on a loop. R2-D2 explains that it is a private message meant for Obi-Wan and refuses to play it in full until it is delivered to him by Luke.


    This is a lot like what encryption is meant to achieve. Private data intended for a specific recipient is rendered indecipherable to anyone who's not authorized to view it, especially if they're a random moisture farmer. For encryption best practices, check out CSA's Recommendations for Adopting a Cloud-Native Key Management Service → https://csaurl.org/dz4jwm



    ------------------------------
    Olivia Rempe
    ------------------------------


  • 2.  RE: 5 Cybersecurity Lessons We Can Learn from Star Wars - Lesson 1: Help me encryption, you're my only hope

    Posted Oct 14, 2021 02:11:00 AM
    Edited by Michael Roza Oct 14, 2021 02:22:22 AM
    Hi,

    I recall the scene vaguely.
    I would say that since R2-D2 refused to play anything other than the preview for Luke because Luke was not Obi-Wan this appears to be more a case of restricted access rather encryption.
    This is not to say that the message is not encrypted. Should Luke or anyone tried to hack or open up R2-D2 to access storage and the message presumably the message would have been encrypted.

    ------------------------------
    Michael Roza CPA, CISA, CIA, MBA, Exec MBA
    ------------------------------

    Original Message