[R] security using R at work

[Rainer M Krug]

This can likely be answered for R itself, but R itself (without additional packages) is very limited. As soon as you install packages, it all depends on the package you install and if you trust the authors of these packages.

As far as I know, there is no code checking for security on CRAN (please correct me if I am wrong!).

The advantage of R and open source: you can always look into the source code and see yourself.

And as this can be done, and R is not written by a single person or company, the likelihood of a backdoor in R is very very low (lower than in many commercial products I would say).

Cheers,

Rainer


> On 8 Aug 2018, at 18:40, rsherry8 <rsherry8 using comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> I consider R to be secure. It is possible, but very unlikely, that there are some back door traps in R where somebody could access your data. There is no software that is 100% secure and R is not 100% secure.
> 
> Bob
> 
> On 8/8/2018 11:09 AM, Laurence Clark wrote:
>> Hello all,
>> 
>> I want to download R and use it for work purposes. I hope to use it to analyse very sensitive data from our clients.
>> 
>> My question is:
>> 
>> If I install R on my work network computer, will the data ever leave our network? I need to know if the data goes anywhere other than our network, because this could compromise it's security. Is there is any chance the data could go to a server owned by 'R' or anything else that's not immediately obvious, but constitutes the data leaving our network?
>> 
>> Thank you
>> 
>> Laurence
>> 
>> 
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Laurence Clark
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>> 
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>> ______________________________________________
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>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
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> 
> ______________________________________________
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> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

--
Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)

University of Zürich

Cell:       +41 (0)78 630 66 57
email:      Rainer using krugs.de
Skype:      RMkrug

PGP: 0x0F52F982




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