ORLANDO -- Cisco Systems Inc. and RSA Security Inc. last week announced plans to jointly develop security technology that will provide encryption keys for archived data first on tape drives and eventually for other types of networked storage media.
Executives said the two firms plan to integrate Cisco’s MDS 9000 Storage Media Encryption and RSA’s Key Manager technologies to provide centralized data encryption, key management and key provisioning capabilities to storage devices on Cisco networks.
The encryption technology will be added to Cisco-based storage-area networks by inserting a jointly developed line card into a Cisco server chassis. The first card, for tape drives, will ship later this year.
Rajeev Bhardwaj, director of product management at Cisco, contended that the tool will be easier to implement and use than encryption and key management appliances.
Such appliances, from vendors such as NeoScale Systems Inc., Vormetric Inc. and Network Appliance Inc.’s Decru Inc. unit, require IT personnel to rewire and reconfigure networks, he said. “From our perspective, you install the line card, and with the flip of a switch you say, ‘This backup server encrypts this tape,’” Bhardwaj said.
The added work isn’t a liability for some IT managers, who still prefer using appliances to protect data.
“The reason I like the appliance is because it’s absolutely nonobtrusive to my main system,” said Sean Azhadi, senior vice president of technology at San Diego County Credit Union. “That is a huge advantage because I don’t have to work with IBM or any of my other vendors to try to create some sort of environment to support this stuff.”
The credit union, which has $3.9 billion in assets, 800 employees and 25 branch locations across San Diego and Riverside counties in California, tested NeoScale’s CryptoStor appliance for nine months before implementing it companywide three weeks ago, Azhadi said.
Because the NeoScale appliance is working as needed, the credit union has no plans to evaluate the new Cisco-RSA offering, Azhadi noted.
Cisco and RSA announced the joint effort here last week at a press conference at EMC World, the user conference of RSA’s parent company, EMC. Bhardwaj said the new line card will provide 10 gigabits of encryption throughput and an application programming interface for adding key management to drives on Cisco networks.
EMC and Cisco officials acknowledged that the agreement is nonexclusive.
Bhardwaj would not disclose a schedule for shipping future releases of the card.
