News

posted on 25 June 2008 08:21

Brocade will resell the NetApp Lifetime Key Management (LKM) appliance, adding another capability to its Data Center Fabric architecture.

Brocade is currently developing a new and high-performance encryption and compression capability that will use NetApp's OpenKey API to anable third-party security applications to integrate with NetApp’s secure key management framework. This provides a common tool for easier policy management across encryption technologies. The LKM is based on NetApp's acquired Decru DataFort technology. NetApp already has a list of LKM customers, including some of the industry's largest storage encryption deployments by scale, and expects this to increase dramatically as its new encryption platforms are adopted.

NetApp and Brocade will integrate the Lifetime Key Management products with Brocade’s fabric-based encryption technology. THe idfea is to provide a means to encrypt all data at rest by encrypting at the central storage network access point to it.

Scott Crawford, a research director for Enterprise Management Associates, said: "Fabric-based encryption is one approach that can help reduce the complexity of storage encryption. Today, administrators may manage different encryption for tape, appliances, applications, disk, and more. Fabric-based encryption allows for a single, common method of encrypting all types of data. By centralising encryption, fabric-based approaches can also centralise key management and reduce its complexity."

Brocade reckons that its approach will be significantly faster than existing alternatives as it will be based on Brocade’s 8Gbit/sec DCF architecture, perform at full wire speed, and protect more data in less time without compromising application or user performance. Also, the its inherently heterogeneous nature allows customers to support multiple data backup and data storage products at once.   

 ^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}