NetApp and Brocade have announced the availability of a joint storage security solution that will combine the NetApp Lifetime Key Management solution with fabric-based encryption technology from Brocade. The joint NetApp and Brocade solution helps in enabling a new level of encryption performance with the ability to encrypt corporate data for increased security and compliance with simplified policy management.
Organisations that have employed the use of point encryption products for protecting a single application or type of data in the past can now encrypt their data. The incorporation of NetApp technology will allow NetApp customers to operate the Brocade Encryption Switch in the NetApp DataFort compatibility mode.
The NetApp Lifetime Key Management system provides long-term retention of keys and offers advanced key-sharing policy features that enable customers to define specific encryption appliance sharing groups for added flexibility and disaster recovery capabilities.
For Brocade, these fabric-based encryption solutions deliver on the Brocade Data Centre Fabric (DCF) architecture vision, which is designed to create a more efficient, adaptable, and secure data centre. The solution will be easily deployable and manageable and provide customers with improved storage security without compromising or complicating their existing IT environment. The joint encryption solution also offers innovative, low-cost, secure device decommissioning of legacy disk arrays for making data unrecoverable to meet compliance requirements.
The new encryption solutions are available on the Brocade Encryption Switch, a high-performance, 32-port, auto-sensing 8Gbit/sec Fibre Channel switch, and the Brocade FS8-18 Encryption Blade, which provides the same plug-in storage security services in a 16-port blade for use in the Brocade DCX backbone.
For easier customer deployment with lower risk, the Brocade data encryption solutions can be seamlessly implemented without disruption into the fabric and applied to specified data flows. Both encryption products preserve existing and new storage investments by supporting a heterogeneous mix of networked storage systems and providing future support for virtual tape libraries and tape drives.