Re: postgres zeroization of dead tuples ? i.e scrubbing dead tuples with sensitive data.

On Wed, Nov 18, 2015 at 01:38:47PM -0800, Adrian Klaver wrote:
> Alright, I was following you up to this. Seems to me deleted data would
> represent stale/old data and would be less valuable.

If the data that was deleted is sensitive, then the fact that you
deleted it but that it didn't actually go away means you can be lulled
into complacency about your vulnerability with respect to that data in
a way that you're unlikely to be in respect of data you still have
(only with new values). Lots of people forget about deleted data once
it's deleted.

Keep in mind that sometimes people delete data from a system because
it's been archived somewhere else or something like that -- not all
databases have the totality of all the relevant data in them, but can
often represent just "current" data.

Best regards,

A

--
Andrew Sullivan
ajs(at)crankycanuck(dot)ca