So much for secure storage

With information security figuring so prominently in the headlines, you might assume that people in their right mind wouldn’t still ignore security. But examine the latest goings-on in the storage industry and you’ll trip across a very different reality. The storage gang finds itself in a post-bubble state of euphoria over an initiative called information lifecycle management (ILM). Simply defined, ILM provides storage devices with application and business intelligence rules and policies to improve information management, automate mundane tasks and cut expenses. You want to access, backup and archive critical pieces of corporate info? No problem; ILM will automate the whole process. This sounds like a great idea until you realize that the ILM vision completely minimizes any notion of security. Ridiculous, but true. Examine any slide in a vendor’s ILM presentation and you’re likely not to see the word “security” anywhere. This is a serious oversight. You would think that any discussion on information lifecycle management would by definition include information security. But when storage guys talk about security, the discussion usually defaults to data protection technologies like backup or disaster recovery. So security-related issues such as antivirus, content filtering, intrusion prevention or digital rights management trigger blank looks. Full Story