Summary
Data at rest in information technology means data that is housed physically on computer data storage in any digital form (e.g. cloud storage, s, databases, data warehouses, spreadsheets, archives, tapes, off-site or cloud backups, mobile devices etc.). Data at rest includes both structured and unstructured data. This type of data is subject to threats from hackers and other malicious threats to gain access to the data digitally or physical theft of the data storage media. To prevent this data from being accessed, modified or stolen, organizations will often employ security protection measures such as password protection, data encryption, or a combination of both. The security options used for this type of data are broadly referred to as data at rest protection (DARP). Data at rest is used as a complement to the terms data in use and data in transit which together define the three states of digital data (see Figure 1). There is some disagreement regarding the difference between data at rest and data in use. Data at rest generally refers to data stored in persistent storage (disk, tape) while data in use generally refers to data being processed by a computer central processing unit (CPU) or in random access memory (RAM, also referred to as main memory or simply memory). Definitions include: "...all data in computer storage while excluding data that is traversing a network or temporarily residing in computer memory to be read or updated." "...all data in storage but excludes any data that frequently traverses the network or that which resides in temporary memory. Data at rest includes but is not limited to archived data, data which is not accessed or changed frequently, files stored on hard drives, USB thumb drives, files stored on backup tape and disks, and also files stored off-site or on a storage area network (SAN)." Data in use has also been taken to mean “active data” in the context of being in a database or being manipulated by an application.
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.