Neoscale Unveils Cryptostor Keyvault For Centralized, Multivendor Storage Encryption Key Management
MILPITAS, Calif. — March 14, 2006 — NeoScale Systems Inc., the premier provider of enterprise storage security solutions, today announced CryptoStor KeyVaultâ„?, the industry’s first open security key management system to deliver centralized management of both NeoScale encryption appliance keys and those from third-party storage encryption vendors. With CryptoStor KeyVault, organizations can centrally manage and distribute encryption keys among multiple internal locations, to disaster recovery sites, and to business partners, to facilitate information recovery from any authorized location.
With information breaches mounting, companies are increasingly relying on encryption to secure their important information, such as critical data stored on backup tapes. As encryption becomes more pervasive in enterprise environments, so does the number of encryption keys, leaving IT managers with the challenge of finding encryption key management that is not only secure and automated, but also open to support multivendor environments. CryptoStor KeyVault provides the answer with its public key operations architecture (PKO) to deliver storage-centric encryption key management.
According to a recent Gartner Research report, Key Public Technologies: Organizations Must Determine Whether They Need PKI or PKO Architecture, North America, 2006, while managing security in distributed environments presents major operational challenges to enterprises, many of these challenges can be mitigated with an appropriate public key management solution.
“PKO-based identity management systems provide organizations with benefits that include compliance, assisting with audits, and generating real cost-savings in operations and help desk support,” said Eric Ouellet, vice president at Gartner. “The PKO approach to storage encryption key management addresses the demands and requirements that are specific to an organization’s storage infrastructure and can provide great operational value by providing a set-and-forget approach to cryptographic management. This can result in a valuable service to organizations.”
“Organizations are beginning to feel the pain of managing multiple encryption layers across multiple sites and among multiple vendors,” said Jon Oltsik, senior analyst for Enterprise Strategy Group. “With KeyVault’s open API architecture, NeoScale has not only given customers a centralized, automated key management solution for CryptoStor security appliances, but also an open API to accommodate keys from other encryption-enabled storage devices such as tape drives and backup applications. KeyVault holds promise for a new line item in storage security best practices.”
KeyVault: Secure, Automated, and Open
A FIPS 140-2 Level 3 tamper-proof chassis ensures the KeyVault foundation of security is solid. All hardware, software, firmware, and user operation is covered by FIPS certification, leaving no weaknesses. Building on that foundation, secure communications between the KeyVault system, NeoScale appliances, and third-party key management systems is assured with mutual session authentication using public/private key pairs and SSL/TLS protocols.
The management of enterprise encryption keys is too important to leave to complex, error-prone manual operations — the chance of user or operator error is just too high, especially in critical situations such as disaster recovery. CryptoStor KeyVault automates all of the essential key life-cycle activities to eliminate any chance of failure. Security managers decide when and where keys should be made available and create Trust Relationships to automate their decisions. Once activated, Trust Relationships automatically ensure that keys are available when and where they are needed, and can be used only by properly authenticated users.
Designed for heterogeneous storage security environments, CryptoStor KeyVault is open to third-party developers through published APIs (application programming interfaces), technical references, technical briefs, and other documentation. These resources are available on the CryptoStor Developer’s Site, which is accessed through the NeoScale Storage Security Portal via the NeoScale home page at www.neoscale.com.
“Public security breaches have raised consumer awareness about the importance of information security. In response, organizations have deployed storage security appliances in large enterprises which has driven issues of key management to the forefront,” said Barbara Nelson, CEO for NeoScale Systems. “KeyVault addresses these not only today but for the future as organizations grow and change. With KeyVault, NeoScale is setting a new standard in storage security and disaster recovery by safeguarding multivendor encryption keys from unauthorized access with end-to-end security while providing business efficiency through automation.
About NeoScale
Founded in June 2000, NeoScale Systems Inc. is the premier storage security company enabling enterprise customers to achieve data privacy with the lowest operational impact and at the lowest total cost. The company’s award-winning CryptoStorâ„? appliances automate the encryption of data that is either in-flight over a storage network or at rest on disk, virtual tape, or tape media. NeoScale solutions have been certified by leading storage vendors and have been deployed worldwide within government, financial services, healthcare, and other organizations. The company has raised more than $44 million in venture financing from Advanced Technology Ventures, Bay Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Sevin Rosen Funds. For more information, visit www.neoscale.com.