CA Extends Tape Encryption to the Mainframe

Fri, May 12, 2006

CA on Monday will launch new software that aims to ease tape encryption and key management for mainframe users, the company said.

The launch comes in the wake of numerous highly publicized incidents of lost or stolen media that exposed personal data and amid legislation from many U.S. states requiring companies to alert consumers when their personal information has been breached.

CA’s BrightStor Tape Encryption tool encrypts data as it is written to standard label z/OS tapes, without requiring changes to job control language or applications, the company said.

CA acknowledged the IT overhead associated with data encryption. "We don’t believe all data should be encrypted. Although we rewrite directly to tape at the I/O level, there is still overhead associated with I/O encryption. And the stronger, more powerful encryption you’re applying, the more overhead there is associated with that," said John Hill, a product management director for CA in Islandia, N.Y.

To help address the problem, CA allows administrators to pick and choose which encryption algorithms they use for different data sets with different security needs. "You can intermingle the classifications you use, and you can even intermingle data sets on that tape that are unencrypted," Hill said.

For businesses that want to share data on tape with customers or partners, CA provides free decryption downloadable software for third parties.

The software integrates with tape management tools from CA and other vendors. It also aims to automate key management from creation to deletion.

BrightStor Tape Encryption pricing starts at US$60,000 for encrypting up to 300 data files a month.

CA is also looking into disk encryption for mainframe users, although it has no set plans at this time, Hill said.

IBM is also extending the security functionality of its mainframe to tape. Last month, the company added an encryption facility to its TS1120 tape drive as part of its latest Z9 mainframe rollout.

-Shelley Solheim, IDG News Service

Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage.

You are here: Technology Topics » Data Center » News Feature

Most Recent Mainframes Stories

White Papers »

The Mainframe and the Cloud

Read the white paper and see how an IBM zEnterprise offers improvements in reliability, scalability, security and flexibility; all while reducing costs.

Delivering a Greener Data Center

This paper covers power utilization, intelligent power management and industry best practices for energy efficiency. Extreme Networks® takes a lifecycle approach to power efficiency, management and recycling, offering savings to our customers and promoting a greener world.

Enterprise Strategy Group: The Case for a New Data-centric DLP White Paper

With increasing data growth, comes increased need for data security. The existing DLP model, with a focus on compliance/enforcement is not sufficient as the data discovery and classification capabilities are not granular enough. Read this paper to find how you can efficiently and accurately manage your risk by rapidly inventorying and classifying your data and then developing remediation workflows that support business needs.

Data Loss by the Numbers

This paper breaks down attack sources into four categories: external, malicious insiders, accidental insiders, and unknown.

Data Loss Prevention Solution for Managing E-Discovery

The rapid growth of data and technology is creating challenges for organizations as this digital data is considered to be business communications and must be preserved according the same industry-specific regulations governing the retention and discovery of emails and more traditional forms of electronic communications. This paper examines the role that Data Loss Prevention ("DLP") technology can play in helping organizations address the challenges of locating information in response to electronic discovery.

Best Practices in Data Protection - Executive Summary

This research, conducted by the Ponemon Institute, focuses on issues relating to the use of data protection solutions such as endpoint encryption and data loss prevention within the workplace.

Webcasts »

Customer Spotlight: How IPC The Hospitalist Company Implemented Oracle on VMware

Have you been looking to hear about customer's experiences with the new VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager product? View this webcast to learn about VMware customer, Navicure, and their experiences testing and evaluating the recovery manager, their progress in implementing it in their environment and their advice other customers considering using vCenter.

Virtualizing Microsoft and Oracle on VMware vSphere: Benefits and Best Practices

Virtualizing business-critical applications is an essential step in your journey to the cloud. Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange and SharePoint, and Oracle applications, are often the backbone of business IT. The benefits of virtualizing these applications extend far beyond mere consolidation. Understanding how VMware improves quality of service and agility while reducing costs will help you make the case for taking virtualization to the next level in your company.

Architecting a Modern Approach to Data Management

Applications are changing - they're increasingly web-oriented, global in nature and run from multiple device types. Additionally, the volume of data is growing exponentially every year. How do you ensure your applications have fast, accurate, up-to-date information in this new world? Modern applications are data-intensive; delivering data the old way using monolithic databases isn't working. What's needed is a modern approach to data. One that scales-out as needed and delivers predictable high performance, but without sacrificing data consistency or integrity.

Solving the Data Challenge for Real-Time Awareness and Risk Assessment: Webcast

Real-time, global data updates have become a critical business requirement for financial-services firms. Overnight or hourly batch jobs can cause erroneous results and missed opportunities. New regulatory requirements dictate real-time reporting of liquidity; traders want access to real-time market and risk positions; and the time windows for relevancy of cross-selling and marketing opportunities are getting shorter. To deal with these issues and new requirements, firms need to be able to react quickly to changes in data. Quick reactions require near-instant access to data, risk analysis and deeper computational analysis for effective decision making. View this webcast to learn how to achieve real-time awareness by managing ever-increasing data volumes and transaction rates.

Introduction to Virtualization

This video webcast is designed to help those with little to no virtualization experience understand why virtualization and VMware are so important to driving down both capital and operational costs. The session will start with the introduction of the key concepts and technologies of virtualization, introduce the vSphere Hypervisor, and build up to an overview of VMware vSphere® 5, the world's most robust and complete virtualization platform. This session will also discuss new solutions such as the vSphere Storage Appliance and VMware GO that are making it easier than ever before to get started with virtualization.

How Klout Combines Big Data with Microsoft Business Intelligence to Measure Influence

Big Data-it has the potential of transforming a business. In the case of Klout, a social networking analytics site, big data is the heart of the business. Klout processes and analyzes billions of user data signals every day-from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs and more. How do they do it? Gain valuable insights from David Mariani, vice president of engineering for Klout.

Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter