Why You Should Pay Attention
Data security has never been more important. Government regulations and business best practices require that data should be stored for longer periods of time. With this increase of data that needs to be retained for compliance regulations, the risks of a data breach amplify. Since 2005 there have been over 260 million individual records that have been lost - with many of these records containing sensitive business data or individuals’ personal identification information. As of today, many countries and 44 US states have passed legislation requiring companies to notify individuals and the authorities when a data breach occurs -- placing harsh penalties on this lost data as well. The Ponemon Institute, Experts in Responsible Information Management, recently concluded that the cost of a lost record (individual record) is over $200 which includes fines, lost business, legal and other expenses but does not factor in the loss of future business based on the loss of consumer confidence due to public embarrassment.

Many states and nations have established legislation requiring that businesses take extra steps in protecting individuals’ data and are specifically calling out encryption as a means to compliance. As more and more states and countries adopt this type of legislation, here are some questions to consider when deciding if you need to utilize data encryption to secure your valuable data:

• Are you storing proprietary information for your business?
• Are you storing either customer or employee personal information such as social security numbers, birthdates, financial records, health records, addresses?
• Are you replicating data between sites?
• Do you have offsite data retention requirements for disaster recovery, either on physical tape or over the wire?

If you answered yes to any of the above, then you should implement an encryption strategy within your business.

Now that you have decided that encryption is a necessity, you are now faced with the challenge of integrating encryption into your existing backup, recovery, and archive processes.  This additional business requirement introduces another technical dimension to an already complex set of processes, leaving you with important questions to resolve:

• How will I add encryption without affecting the backup window?
• Will this change my backup processes and software environment?
• How will I manage the encryption process?
• Can I encrypt data being transported between sites, both via replication and on tapes?

Without the right approach and architecture, users will be forced to make painful tradeoffs to achieve data security and may be forced to settle for poor performance, hardware or software dependencies, and complex management. Quantum has solutions that remove the complexity of securing your data. Quantum’s backup solutions support encryption that is cost effective and integrated with our DXi-Series disk based backup systems and Scalar tape libraries to enable you to secure your most critical asset, your data.

These resources will provide you with more in-depth information about Quantum’s encryption technology and the security solutions we provide.

Understanding the Reality -- Review Recent Major Data Breaches and US Legislation

• Major Recent Data Breaches as Reported at PrivacyRights.org
• Featured list of US Data Security Laws

Executing a Long Term Data Retention Plan that Includes Encryption

• Long Term Data Retention - Five Key Considerations

Choosing the Right Encryption Key Management Solution

• Securing Data Stored on Tape with Encryption: How to choose the right encryption key management solution

Quantum has disk and tape systems to help you secure your critical data assets. On our disk systems Quantum provides encryption when data is replicated between sites and our tape systems Quantum provides LTO-4 drive based encryption with an integrated key manager.