Companies encouraged to look to efficient encryption when considering mass storage

People considering storage should look to encryption to ensure that what they storage is secure.

John Rollason, EMEA solutions manager at NetApp, claimed that the quantity levels of what people are looking to store is ‘quite scary', with 80-90 terabytes being stored in some cases.

Rollason claimed that there are two key areas that are important to consider when looking at storage security – encryption and key management.

Rollason said: “The first key area is encryption that we have been talking about, but not every organisation is taking it seriously, we can encrypt data at the storage level and can mitigate risk on to a log tape or disk. It is really about the strength of the encryption.

“It is also how you manage that, as there is no point in having technologies because you would need a blank cheque to deploy them, so you need to find a level between storage efficiency and data protection security.”

He also claimed that key management and key usage are as important, as people look to consolidate their storage but go into it without the knowledge of what they want or need to protect.

“People are looking to consolidate and want to do this on one system and one architecture, but they need to have systems that are sole and unified. People need to think about access control and encryption as once it is on a tape or in the back of a van it can be accessed quite easily,” said Rollason.

He also claimed that there is a need for protected storage to secure data against compromise and site failure. Data retention is also important, as copies need to be taken ‘in the same way that people keep copies of building plans or legal documentation'.

See original article on scmagazineus.com