Features - Enterprise Data Insights:

DECRU CLAIMS STORAGE SECURITY OUT OF 'CONJECTURE MODE'
By Simon Robinson For the451.com

Storage security startup Decru says user interest in protecting corporate data behind the firewall has moved from "conjecture" mode to "customer responsiveness."

Decru has extended its alliance with Network Appliance to jointly target storage security opportunities in the public sector, financial services, healthcare and technology industries.

It has also unveiled new versions of its NAS-specific security appliance -– the E510 –- with souped-up access controls, secure logging and lifetime key management capabilities. It claims it is the only vendor to offer transparent NAS support.

The 451 Take

Decru claims emerging standards such as the U.S. Department of Defense's 5015.2 are helping turn initial customer conjecture about storage security into a valid component of an enterprise security strategy. The company also claims almost half the opportunities it comes across involve NAS-based storage in some form.

The worm may be slowly turning, but we have yet to be convinced that the storage security market is ready for prime time. It's still an expensive solution to an ill-defined problem, and interest from large vendors is ephemeral. That said, Decru's momentum is continuing -– it claims 20 customers across three continents, has recently formed an alliance with Sun and plans a number of improvements to its SAN appliance.

Event Details

Decru has teamed up with Network Appliance and records management specialist MDY Advanced Technologies to create a joint offering targeting the secure electronic records management market. The trio will initially target the United States government sector; the offering has been certified by the Department of Defense to address specific regulations for controlling the creation, use and deletion of electronic records, although NetApp and Decru will also target the healthcare, financial and technology verticals. NetApp will sell both its primary (FAS) and secondary (NearStore) storage offerings into these target markets, although exact details of the bundle have yet to be ironed out.

The announcement was made to coincide with the latest version of Decru's DataFort E510. The hardware encryption appliance, which forms Decru's NAS storage offering, has been updated to include a number of "souped-up" features. These include improved secure access controls with additional granularity for Unix NIS environments, "tamper-proof" secure logging, and a key management system for secure and automated backup and recovery of encryption keys, which employs a quorum method to reduce vulnerabilities.

Competitive Landscape

Decru says it is the only storage security vendor to deal with NAS transparently; it uses a proxy server that speaks CIFS and NFS, rather than the agent-based approaches of its rivals. However, NeoScale claims it can integrate with a NAS box without using agent technology.

Decru contends that the status quo, rather than price or competition, is the biggest barrier it runs into. It claims this is changing rapidly, helped in part by its pricing model, which allows customers to start small and scale their deployments as they become more comfortable with the technology. Prices start at $30,000.

Decru claims to have never lost in a competitive bake-off, although NeoScale claims it has never gone head-to-head with Decru, and says it would relish the opportunity. It is perhaps more indicative of the early-stage nature of the market that two of the handful of startups – others include Vormetric and Kasten Chase –- seldom, if ever, compete for the same customer.

Courtesy www.the451.com