Thank God for Regulations

5:35 PM -- Not like anyone buying or selling storage gear needs reminding, but a couple interesting bits boiled up today to remind us all about the impact of Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, and countless other federal and state regulations.

Cigital's Gary McGraw makes the case that compliance has given enterprises a much clearer picture of their security issues. (See Compliance As Kick-Starter.) SOX and the Payment Card Industry (PCI) standard have exposed loopholes and unexpected vulnerabilities and have sensitized CEOs in particular to the many interesting idiosyncrasies of storage security.

In another report, compliance issues continue to drive IT spending. (See Enterprises Up Security Budgets.) Big surprise, huh? Actually what is surprising is the growth due to compliance and regulatory concerns: security spending up 50 percent as a result of SOX, HIPAA, et al. So much for the notion that compliance spending has largely peaked.

Compliance regulations have been a huge boon to storage vendors. The party's far from over.

Terry Sweeney, Editor in Chief, Byte and Switch