Safety in Numbers

Still trying to catch your breath after the non-issue of the DST meltdown? Me either.

This looming technical Hindenburg was supposed to rock our data centers to the core last weekend, like nothing since Y2K. But where the Hindenburg caught fire and crashed in jaw-dropping spectacle, DST was just gaseous drivel, a chance to stir the pot that's filled with enterprise users' darkest fears.

I start with this as a way to explain or understand the abundance of storage security news that's come down the pike in the last week. Is it because of the Data Protection Summit going on down the street from me in Irvine, Calif.? Probably not. And there are no looming compliance deadlines we're bumping against right now.

Still, the data protection conference provides a good flash point for this twinning of storage and security we've been tracking for some time. It's also provided a couple of sobering points about the management of secured data. (See Encryption's Hard Truths and Red Tape Trips Up Security.)

Successful IPOs are also noteworthy flash points, and Sourcefire's recent flotation flashed some big dollar signs. (See Sourcefire Glows on Debut.) As the first IT security IPO in more than a year, its higher-than-expected opening price and oversubscribed shares helped the vendor raise almost $90 million. Anyone care to bet how long we have to wait till the next data protection vendor or startup dives in with its own IPO?Data's sanctity inside the data center isn't getting overlooked, with a couple of unusual product introductions. Virtual machines, all the rage as more and more enterprises catch on to the server savings of virtualization, free up lots of CPUs (and personnel). But Blue Lane stepped forward with a technique to protect VMs while they get checked out for possible infections and necessary patching. (See Virtual Tip of the Iceberg.)

Imation also introduced an interesting way to keep track of backup tapes -- instead of shuttling them around in employees' cars, the vendor is using RFID chips to track them like so much Wal-Mart inventory. (See Imation Intros RFID Tracker.) Interesting idea; whether it actually grabs IT's attention remains to be seen.

Bottom line? Now that we know DST had no ticking time bombs, we can get on with the business of storing and protecting enterprise assets. The bigger interim challenge may be containing all the hair-on-fire vendor rhetoric. The data center's not crashing and burning... at least not this week.

Terry Sweeney, Editor in Chief, Byte and Switch