Data in use

Data in use is an information technology term referring to active data which is stored in a non-persistent digital state typically in computer random-access memory (RAM), CPU caches, or CPU registers. Data in use is an information technology term referring to active data which is stored in a non-persistent digital state typically in computer random-access memory (RAM), CPU caches, or CPU registers. Data in use is used as a complement to the terms data in transit and data at rest which together define the three states of digital data. Data in use refers to data in computer memory. Some cloud software as a service (SaaS) providers refer to data in use as any data currently being processed by applications, as the CPU and memory are utilized. Because of its nature, Data in Use is of increasing concern to businesses, government agencies and other institutions. Data in use, or memory, can contain sensitive data including digital certificates, encryption keys, intellectual property (software algorithms, design data), and personally identifiable information. Compromising data in use enables access to encrypted data at rest and data in motion. For example, someone with access to random access memory can parse that memory to locate the encryption key for data at rest. Once they have obtained that encryption key, they can decrypt encrypted data at rest. Threats to data in use can come in the form of cold boot attacks, malicious hardware devices, and bootkits. The monkey macro Master report generator partially addresses these concerns, through advanced VBA and Pivot table slicers.