You can live forever digitally for a “nominal price”.
Here’s another contributor to the growth of content in the world: information immortality.
nEternity is offering to keep your digital life – photos, music, your blog – alive and available online forever – independent of your domain or the photo sharing service you’re using.
nEternity may or may not take off. More significant is the trend it points towards: the extension of the lifetime of digital data. Businesses will continue to lengthen their data’s life from here on.
The rules for data retention are changing as digital copies are increasingly the only copies that exist. This will create a new set of businesses focused on extending the life of digital records beyond the current technology on which they are stored. It makes today’s digital archives look downright transitory.
And you thought those backup tapes were troublesome…
Data growth and data value trump need to cut costs
Sepaton surveyed enterprise customers and found that data protection stays in the “have to” pile when it comes time to choose which bills to pay in these tough times. A summary of Jon Toigo’s summary of Sepaton’s report:
Nearly 75% will maintain or increase data protection budgets in 2009
Investments are focused on reducing the cost of data protection
Large and growing volumes of data are becoming the business status quo
Virtualization is increasing data protection demands
A majority are using tape today; a minority expect to be using tape in 12 months
When times are tough, true priorities emerge. The care and feeding of business data makes the list, it seems.
Seagate recently launched two portable drives with very different personalities. Why? One size no longer fits all. But which drive is right for you?
Seagate FreeAgent Go - a great personal drive. It’s the thinnest portable drive in the world, with up to 500 GB and a desktop dock.
I use the FreeAgent Go for my personal data. I can drop the Go into a dock at work and easily use the files on my work PC. I don’t have to mix my personal and work content, but have access to both.
Maxtor BlackArmor – a great business drive. It’s the safest drive in the world, with government-grade 128-bit AES encryption and up to 320 GB.
I use the BlackArmor for backing up my work files. I keep it at home as a simple disaster recovery scheme. There is absolutely no risk of anyone accessing the data without the password, even if it were to fall out of my bag at a hacker’s convention.
Unlike traditional storage solutions that are add-on afterthoughts and don’t always work well together, CentralAxis BE puts the content first. It’s a single central storage solution that makes managing the changing demands for storage simpler and safer as a business grows:
Easy to install and manage with a compact design and anywhere access. Staff can access and share data from anywhere via the web.
One system for the entire company with up to 2 terabytes of space. One system works for all employees across Windows and Mac OSes.
Safety for all a company’s data with automatic backups for up to 20 PCs that save up to ten historical versions of information. Backups are mirrored across two drives for added safety. Plug an external drive into a USB port for rotating backups offsite.
Need more space? Add another CentralAxis BE.
At some point you’ll probably need a more complicated solution. You can put your IT department on that task…once your big enough to hire one.
McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator adds self-encrypting PC drives to its bag of security tricks
There’s a security industry axiom that says “It’s better to place the guard next to the jewels.” With McAfeee’s latest move, it looks like the information security industry is taking that to heart by bringing self-encrypting disk drives (SED) into the mainstream mix of security infrastructure elements.
Unlike software-based encryption, SED drives like Seagate’s Momentus FDE drives encrypt everything written to a drive, at the drive. This takes away potential ‘back doors’ or access points to PC data and encrypts at full speed. It makes encryption hackproof and “free” from a performance and individual PC management standpoint.
What’s been lacking are the hooks in some enterprise management tools like McAfee’s ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO) that simplify management of self-encrypting PCs. Wave Systems, SECUDE International and others already support Momentus SED.
McAfee’s announcement makes SED an easy-to-add security tool for a much broader market. Expect rapid growth in SED as more companies place more guards next to their digital crown jewels.
Don’t agree? Read this, then just try and convince me otherwise.
The scariest part is how many people, processes and organizations had to drop the ball on data security for this to happen. Data loss these days is no longer a scandal – it’s about being human.
Storage vendors, please hurry! The safety of my personal information is in your hands!
Granted, PC encryption is just one of many changes that are needed, as crooks can and do steal data from places other than PCs. But basic hardware-encrypted data is an essential foundational security step that needs to be adopted ASAP.
Take the Oops factor out of the security equation with mobile encryption
The UK government’s data security woes continue, the latest a misplaced USB stick containing detailed data on 10,000 serious offenders -and all 84,000 prisoners in England. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, in charge of UK prisons, is the Embarrassed Minister of the Month when it comes to UK data security.
Of course there will be lots of hand-wringing about this persistent trend. The reality is that while processes can be improved, people will be people; stuff happens.
Encryption makes lost drives no-news events
Mandate fully encrypted mobile storage like Seagate BlackArmor and the UK government will at least “oops” proof data on the move.
Bruce Wayne would need petabytes of storage to support his nocturnal hobby
I saw The Dark Knight. The thing I like most about this movie and its predecessor Batman Begins is their plausibility. Unlike most superhero movies, they are able to account for the hero’s “powers” with (mostly) credible technology. Not cheap or easy, but almost feasible.
So…what are Batman’s storage requirements? (more…)
DFS-hidden data can be found by Microsoft Vista, Word and Google Desktop
You may be in denial if you think a Deniable File System (DFS) will fully secure your data. So says Byte and Switch today, based on a study by British Telecom’s Bruce Schneier and a team of researchers from the University of Washington. They were able to expose DFS-hidden data with Microsoft Vista, Word, and Google desktop.
Cool, but encryption is a kindler and gentler way to retire disk drives
Blocks and Files highlighted this very physical solution to a data management problem: how to be sure sensitive data on retired disk drives never again sees the light of day. It’s a do-it-yourself version of industrial disk crushers.
Verity’s quite excited about the Hard Drive Destroyer, and I know it fills a desperate need. But it’s not very resource-efficient nor environmentally friendly. That’s a perfectly good drive! Can’t someone else use it?
The renewable alternative: self-encrypting hard drives like the Momentus FDE and BlackArmor. When it’s time to retire, throw away the AES-grade encryption key, and Poof! - what was once written will never be seen again. Certifiably so.
Momentus FDE is a notebook drive. The first enterprise FDE drive will be the Seagate Cheetah 15K . Stay tuned.
Who’s destroying drives out there? Anyone willing to admit they’re ignoring this problem and reusing drives?
