Features - Financial Plays Of The Week:

DECRU, CISCO TEAM ON STORAGE, SAN SECURITY

Decru Inc announced that it is working with Cisco Systems to deliver mutually qualified, highly secure storage networking solutions to enterprise and government customers. In support of this, Decru has completed interoperability testing of Decru DataFort storage security appliances with the Cisco MDS 9000 Family of multilayer directors and switches in accordance with the guidelines established through the Cisco AVVID Partner Program. As part of an ongoing effort, the two companies will engage in joint marketing and sales efforts, as well as continued interoperability testing and technical solution development.

Cisco and Decru are both recognized as innovators in the security field, and the joint solution addresses growing concerns about the security of networked storage systems. In recent years, storage networks have expanded to include hundreds or thousands of devices and multiple terabytes of data. Storage resources for multiple business units are often consolidated onto shared infrastructures, and organizations typically create multiple copies of data for compliance, data sharing and disaster recovery. These business practices have led to improved efficiency and business continuity, but have also multiplied the security vulnerabilities for stored data.

The Decru Solution

Storage security solutions from Cisco Systems and Decru address a broad range of business and security requirements, including secure SAN consolidation, regulatory compliance, and data privacy. The solutions seamlessly combine fabric security features of the Cisco MDS 9000 with storage encryption and host security features of Decru DataFort storage security appliances. The combined solution delivers transparent, end-to-end storage area network (SAN) security without compromising performance or simplicity.

The Cisco MDS 9000 family provides advanced fabric security features including virtual SAN (VSAN) technology, hardware-based zoning, port security, and DH-CHAP authentication. It also provides hardware-based IPsec encryption to help secure data in motion. Decru DataFort SAN security features include wire-speed (2 Gb per second) encryption for data at rest, automated key management, port locking, and host authentication features including DH-CHAP. A detailed Cisco-Decru solution white paper is available at www.decru.com/partners/techCisco.htm.

"As part of our holistic approach to provide enterprise-wide network security, Cisco's goal is to help our customers secure their vital assets including their data," said Ed Chapman, senior director of product management in the Storage Technology Group at Cisco. "Working with industry leaders is a key part of this effort, and we are pleased to collaborate with Decru to achieve this objective."

"The only way to enhance the security of today's complex storage networks is for vendors to deliver interlocking security solutions," said Kevin Brown, vice president of marketing at Decru. "The Cisco-Decru solution provides a turnkey solution to help protect the entire data path including hosts, Fibre Channel networks, and data at rest in storage."

Gartner Research recently predicted that by year-end 2006, failure to encrypt credit card numbers stored in a database will be considered legal negligence in civil cases of unauthorized disclosures (probability 0.8), and that by year-end 2007, 80% of Fortune 1000 enterprises will encrypt their sensitive data at rest (probability 0.8).

Decru DataFort

Decru DataFort storage security appliances combine secure access controls, authentication, storage encryption, and secure logging to provide unprecedented protection for sensitive stored data. By locking down stored data with strong encryption and routing all access through secure hardware, DataFort radically simplifies the security model for networked storage.

Decru DataFort appliances are the only solution that can be deployed transparently in SAN, NAS, DAS and tape backup environments, with no disruption to servers, desktops, applications, storage, or user workflow. DataFort has received numerous government and third-party certifications including U.S. Department of Defense 5015.2 certification and FIPS-140-2 Level 3 certification. DataFort is currently underway with Common Criteria certification, with an assurance target of EAL-4+. Decru products have been adopted by customers on three continents in sectors including financial services, health care, telecommunications, media, semiconductors, manufacturing, aerospace and government.