Fed Disk Debacle's an ILM Cue

Los Alamos National Laboratory, home to one of the nation's more sensitive nuclear weapons facilities, is a storage networking trendsetter. But that hasn't stopped data from disappearing from the lab's inventory.

The lab this week acknowledged in a public statement that "10 separate pieces of electronic storage, consisting of nine floppy disks and a single large-capacity storage disk" were found missing from the lab's Nonproliferation and International Security Center during routine inventory checks. While at least one of the disks was very old, and it doesn't look as if any classified data's been compromised, the lab's gone into investigative mode.

Among other measures, the lab is reviewing the security and policies "for control of computer data storage devices." Also, various newspaper reports say the University of California, which contracts with the U.S. Department of Energy to manage the lab, may eventually lose its 50-year contract with Los Alamos over this and other snafus.

All this is happening in a facility that's been a poster-child for the latest in networked storage. In October 2003, Los Alamos made headlines and put Panasas Inc. on the map when it invested nearly $3 million in the startup's object-based clustered Linux NAS (see Panasas). The lab also is a big customer of data recovery applications from BakBone Software Inc. (Toronto: BKB) (see BakBone Wins Los Alamos Lab).

What's going on here? What's a facility with the latest in storage networking doing losing data -- and on floppy disks, for heaven's sake?Los Alamos says the issue has nothing to do with its high-end storage network. Instead, the lab acknowledges the issue isn't technology-oriented at all, but has to do with getting tighter control over end-user data handling procedures. "You're absolutely right," says lab spokesman Jim Danneskiold, when asked how a technology showplace has personnel fiddling with floppy disks. "The solution is to look at ILM [integrated lifecycle management]."

What appears to have happened is that folk working at the lab downloaded data in order to create a report on a PC, then subsequently failed to report what they'd done. The lab's public statement this week stressed that the investigation "has not uncovered evidence of willful or malicious intent by any Laboratory personnel."

At least one analyst thinks the situation is one that shows that the best technology can't work effectively if the right framework's not in place. "The majority of valuable data lives at the network edge," says Peter Gerr, analyst at The Enterprise Storage Group Inc. That's where sophisticated storage and information management may not reach -- unless made to do so by their owners.

"While Los Alamos certainly invests at the leading edge of technology... that's still a far cry from having a data or information management process and system in place that protects every byte of information," Gerr says.

Indeed, the lesson of Los Alamos is that the term ILM itself is still more of a marketing chant than a reality. It's up to individual organizations to figure out just what it will mean to them, and how technology will -- or won't -- help.In that vein, neither Bakbone nor Panasas had any comment on the Los Alamos debacle. Neither seems to see it as an opportunity to defend or proselytize their wares.

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch