Compliance
E-discovery tools purchase considerations - January 26, 2008
As data volumes grow, it's increasingly difficult to locate relevant data. Data must be retained longer, and storage users cannot be counted upon to intuitively locate documents, spreadsheets or other data. This is a problem when dealing with electronic discovery (e-discovery) requests that impose a legal obligation to locate relevant data in a timely manner or face fines and possibly adverse judgments.
E-discovery tools from Symantec or Commvault provide powerful search capabilities that can quickly process and index billions of files based on keywords and other common metadata. The tools can also present search results in forms that are easy to understand and often deliver results in a form that is compatible with litigation management tools.
Like any search tool, you'll want to test the product in your own environment before purchasing it. Discovery tools are useless if they can't locate your data and deliver it for litigation. Once you've reviewed the issues involved in purchasing compliance products, you can review the criteria specific to e-discovery tool purchases. After that, you'll find a series of product specifications that will help you compare products from vendors such as Mimosa, Barracuda Networks, Index Engines Inc. and Commvault.
Test your search criteria and metadata. Use the search function to perform discovery drills and see that the tool will actually find mail, documents or other files based on your queries. For example, try locating all Word memos related to a recent company project or initiative. The search tests should return useful and relevant results based on common criteria, such as keywords, sender, file dates and even the context within documents, spreadsheets, email and instant message logs.
Evaluate the search scope and supported file types. Discovery tools can process a wide variety of file types stored on a range of storage hardware across the enterprise. Before purchasing a discovery tool, verify that the tool will work with file types that are most relevant to your organization, such as Word documents, Outlook .pst files, database files, images and .pdfs. Also, ensure that the tool can search storage systems, servers, desktops/workstations, and even corporate laptops or remote sites to locate files of interest.
Consider search performance. As corporate information proliferates into the fringes of the organization (e.g. laptop or remote users), discovery tools must be able to respond to discovery requests in ever-shorter timeframes. Since failing to meet discovery requests can result in fines or judgments, performance can also have an important financial impact for your company. Note the time required to perform each request. Some tools can process terabytes of storage per day.
Evaluate any e-discovery storage requirements.
The results of your searches need to be stored somewhere. Search results and indexes take 4% to 10% of your total file storage utilization. Smaller organizations or businesses operating with little extra storage capacity may get blindsided by unforeseen storage needs.
Consider logging and reporting features. Discovery tools should include logging and reporting features that identify the individuals making requests, criteria used for each search and the results obtained from each search. The tool should also track the disposition of any results, noting any files that are moved, held or copied, establishing a chain of custody that can demonstrate appropriate compliance with discovery requests and verify the authenticity of documents or other files.
Consider integration with litigation tools. Discovery tools should interface with standard litigation tools, such as ProLaw from Thomson Elite, AXS-One Case Management or LexisNexis. This allows counsel to organize and process the results. In many cases, discovery tools will export to some common text, image or other file formats.
Evaluate any network overhead. Pay attention to the discovery tool's deployment. Discovery products that rely on agents or other software deployed across the infrastructure can cause interoperability and maintenance issues. Agents and network crawlers can add unwanted network traffic overhead, placing additional load on the network and possibly slowing performance-sensitive applications. Discovery tools that avoid the use of agents and network crawlers are preferable.
Consider support for offline tape indexing. Organizations that rely on long-term archival tape storage should consider a discovery tool that includes offline tape indexing features. This type of function is available in appliances like those from Index Engines Inc., allowing archive tape contents to be processed into indexes with metadata. Without this type of feature, tapes would need to be restored first and then searched, but this feature can read and index tapes without needing to actually restore the content.
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, NetApp, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland, Cape Canaveral
Other Projects: DR BC Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar CX4
Angry Employee Deletes All of Company's Data - January 26, 2008
Call it a tale of revenge gone wrong. This could happen to you
When Marie Lupe Cooley, 41, of Jacksonville, Fla., saw a help-wanted ad in the newspaper for a position that looked suspiciously like her current job — and with her boss's phone number listed — she assumed she was about to be fired.
So, police say, she went to the architectural office where she works late Sunday night and erased 7 years' worth of drawings and blueprints, estimated to be worth $2.5 million.
"She decided to mess up everything for everybody," Jacksonville Sheriff's Office spokesman Ken Jefferson told reporters. "She just sabotaged the entire business, thinking she was going to get axed."
It didn't take Steven Hutchins, owner of the architectural firm that bears his name, much time to figure out who'd done it — Cooley was the only other person who had full access to the files.
Police arrested Cooley Monday evening and charged her with causing greater than $1,000 damage to computer files, a felony. She was bailed out the following afternoon.
Hutchins told one TV station he'd managed to recover all the files using an expensive data-recovery service.
As for the job, Cooley originally wasn't in danger of losing it. The ad was for Hutchins' wife's company.
The firm told FOXNews.com that Cooley no longer is employed there.
Sencilo Solution specializes in Data Protect and Recovery, "this event is not at all uncommon, it's just not made public, companies are not in the habit of admiting their faults, say CEO and Data Protection VAR Brian McCarthy.
McCarthy as also says "many companies assume that their data is well protected if their core servers are backed up. Server backup is an essential component of data protection, but many companies do not have effective technology in place that will enable them to resume operations quickly after a disaster. Part of this problem lies in the fact that an estimated 60 percent of business-critical data resides unprotected on employees' desktops or laptops. Data at remote and branch offices is likewise often unprotected because of the hardware and administration costs involved. The loss of this data inevitably results in lost revenues, lost productivity, and lost customer confidence, and in some effent class-action suites."
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/security-threat-management.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, NetApp, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland, Cape Canaveral
Other Projects: DR BC Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar CX4
Barracuda Web Filter Wins "Best of Connections 2007" Award From Windows IT Pro in Windows Category - January 20, 2008
The worldwide leader in email and Web security appliances, announced today that the Barracuda Web Filter has been named the "Best of Connections 2007 Awards" winner. Penton Media's Windows IT Pro judges declared the Barracuda Web Filter the best in the Windows category.
The judges reviewed more than 60 IT products and services submissions and chose 18 finalists to be evaluated at the Connections Conference in Las Vegas. Interviews were conducted during the event with winners announced on Nov. 7 on the exhibit floor of the Connections Conference.
"This is the first year of this awards program and were thrilled by the high quality of the entries we received," said Karen Forster, group editorial and strategic director." While we had many worthy products, the winners clearly demonstrated their products' strategic importance to the market, their competitive advantages and the value they provide to customers."
The "Best of Connections 2007" awards recognize companies that offer innovative products in the following categories: Exchange, Mobile, .NET, Office, SharePoint, SQL Server and Windows.
"We are honored to have the Barracuda Web Filter recognized as an innovative Windows product at the Connections show," said Dean Drako, president and CEO of Barracuda Networks. "This distinction highlights our success at addressing the growing need with network administrators for affordable content filtering and powerful anti-spyware protection at the gateway level." "Sencilo Solutions has recently signed up as a Diamond Level Partner", say Brian McCarthy, President and CEO of Sencilo, and Storage and Security Solution Provider based in Orlando Florida.
About the Barracuda Web Filter
Available in six models, the Barracuda Web Filter combines preventative, reactive and proactive measures to form a complete content filtering and anti-spyware solution for businesses of all sizes. The Barracuda Web Filter is designed to enforce acceptable Internet usage policies by blocking access to objectionable content and unauthorized Internet applications. At the same time, the Barracuda Web Filter's award-winning feature set enables the Barracuda Web Filter to block spyware downloads, prevent viruses, and stop access to spyware Web sites. Unlike the widely available desktop software solutions, the Barracuda Web Filter is easily installed and does not require the additional time, money or resources necessary for downloading and maintaining software on each individual PC. Hourly Energize Updates are made automatically by Barracuda Central so that the Barracuda Web Filter can block the ever-changing virus and spyware variants, as well as maintain the most up-to-date database of the latest productivity-inhibiting Web sites.
About Barracuda Networks, Inc.
Established in 2002, Barracuda Networks, Inc. is the worldwide leader in email and Web security appliances. Barracuda Networks also provides world-class IM protection, application server load balancing and message archiving appliances. More than 50,000 companies, including Coca-Cola, FedEx, Harvard University, IBM, L'Oreal, NASA and Europcar, are protecting their networks with Barracuda Networks solutions. Barracuda Networks' success is due to its ability to deliver easy to use, comprehensive solutions that solve the most serious issues facing customer networks without unnecessary add-ons, maintenance, lengthy installations or per user license fees. Barracuda Networks is privately held with its headquarters in Campbell, Calif. Barracuda Networks has offices in eight international locations and distributors in more than 80 countries worldwide.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/products-security.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, NetApp, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale, Tallahassee, Cape Coral, and Pembroke Pines.
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Missing Iron Mountain backup tapes prompts identity theft fears for J.C. Penny customers - January 18, 2008
GE Money, the firm hired by J.C. Penny to run its credit card operations, announced Thursday that it is missing backup tapes containing the personal information of about 650,000 J.C. Penny shoppers.
The personal information contains about 150,000 Social Security numbers. GE said the tape was discovered missing last October by a worker at a warehouse run by Boston-based data-protection and storage company, Iron Mountain Inc.
It is unclear if the data was encrypted. "When stolen data is encrypted, companies are quick to point it out as a way to ensure customers that their identities are safe," say Security Consultant Brian McCarthy for Sencilo Solutions. GE Money spokesman Richard C. Jones said the company was paying for 12 months of credit-monitoring service for customers whose Social Security numbers were on the tape.
"As is standard practice in our industry, we rarely know the nature of the information stored on the media we transport, nor the level of encryption or security our customers use," said Iron Mountain spokesman, Dan O'Neill in an email exchange. "We understand the tape was created in such a manner that unauthorized access to the data is extremely unlikely and difficult, even for its with specialized knowledge and technology." Un-true says, McCarthy, 30 day demo backup software is available from most vendors as a free download, and the tape drives are common place via E-Bay", Iron Mountain again is trying to cover its tracks". The only true and compliance way it to encrypt the tapes using encryption appliances or up-grade to the latest LTO-4 tape drives that have built-in encryption."
It's the second time in recent months that Iron Mountain lost customer data. In October, Iron Mountain said it lost a decade's worth of bank account data and Social Security numbers for almost all Louisiana college applicants and their parents. The company was moving the backup tapes containing the information. A driver reportedly lost a case full of backup data for every Louisiana application for federal student aid from 1998 through Sept. 13, 2007.
Greg Schulz, an industry analyst with the Stillwater Minn.-based StorageIO Group downplayed the J.C Penny incident saying that it would be too labor intensive for a cybercriminal to steal the data off any missing tapes.
"A penny theft criminal is not going to target an individual tape," Schulz said.
If the tape was targeted, a sophisticated cybercriminal would need to know the type of tape it is and have a specific device to read the data. Once cracked, the hacker would need to determine how the data was formatted. The work would be labor and financially intensive and therefore not a viable way for a cybercriminal to make money stealing identities, he said.
"Tapes have been lost and misplaced and have never left the building and the reality is that there are probably fewer tapes being lost today than there have been in the past," Schulz said. "Whether they're putting data on a tape or CDs or removable hard drives, the chance of that data getting lost is there."
"To bolster security in the wake of many high profile data breaches, some companies are encrypting data on backup tapes. Some firms are also using radio frequency identification and global positioning to track and maintain a handle on backup data", McCarthy of Sencilo Solutions said.
IBM has introduced encrypting tape drives and most back up software can encrypt but it still has to be turned on, said Eric Maiwald, an analyst at Midvale, Utah-based Burton Group.The potential for losing data because of a failed key management system must also be taken into account, Maiwald said.
"Encryption mechanisms that use appropriate algorithms with appropriate key lengths are effectively impossible to break. However, we have seen poor implementations that are breakable (such as WEP)," McCarthy said.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-area-network.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, NetApp, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale, Tallahassee, Cape Coral, and Pembroke Pines.
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Destorying Data. How to reduce business risks in an era of ever-increasing regulatory demands. - January 12, 2008
Sencilo Solutions and it's partner PeakData, LLC of Niwot, CO., which developed an innovative set of services, centered on data eradication, to attack a new category of financial and competitive risks head-on.
There was a time, not so long ago, when the primary data-management goal of IT organizations was to preserve data from various forms of loss - from issues related to such things as mechanical (hard) failure, software failure and natural disasters. But the world has changed. A new and multiplying batch of government regulations is keeping both CIOs and CFOs awake at night, according to CarrieAnne Curtis, Media Services general manager and data-security expert at PeakData. Now, enterprises are struggling to find fool-proof ways to get rid of their once-precious data.
Do you know where your data is?
The cost of the new regulations More than 30 new state and pending federal regulations are designed to protect individuals from the loss of their personal information maintained in organizations' IT systems. The net effect of these kinds of security-breach regulations, according to PeakData's Curtis, is that: An organization must maintain total control of personal data it owns or licenses - at all times
If the organization loses track of this data for just minutes, or even seconds, applicable regulations demand that the organization notify, in writing, every individual whose information might possibly have been exposed
According to Curtis, the cost of this type of notification process can run as high as $125 to $175 per person. One well-publicized security-breach case cost the organization involved more than $10 million. Clearly, much is at stake in this new regulatory environment. But what to do?
To destroy or not to destroy?
"Ever more sensitive to complex compliance obligations," Michael Klatman, vice president of Marketing at PeakData, says, "many organizations have gone to extremes to protect data from falling into the wrong hands. In many cases, these extremes include the physical destruction of failed or retired disk drives: an approach that has negative economic as well as environmental consequences." The risks associated with these new regulations are real. But is it really necessary to destroy retired or broken disks in order to avoid falling afoul of some 4,000 laws on data retenion laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, the USA PATRIOT, the California Security Breach Notification Law, PCI Security Standards Council ("PCI SSC"), 21 CFR Part II and many others.
While it eliminates business risk, physically destroying disks also destroys the residual economic value of those disks. And that can cost as much as $1,000 per disk. By contrast, the logical destruction of data through the process of disk eradication permits the enterprise to recover that economic value from their disk subsystem vendor: a strategy that pays for the eradication process many times over.
Destroying data...
Any organization that is destroying (or locking away) retired disk drives, according to Klatman, ought to consider using PeakData's disk-eradication services - whereby PeakData comes onsite and, using its own proprietary system and methodology, logically (rather than physically) removes the data - and certifies, according to the Department of Defense 5220.22-M standard1, that data cannot be recovered from the disk drives in question. Special technologies and methods are required to implement this standard because typical storage firmware and software are not designed to be able to purge all traces of data in this manner.
During the disk-eradication process, the customer's disks never leave the data center, according to PeakData's Curtis, and legacy storage subsystems do not need to be powered up, saving precious energy. Instead, PeakData technicians remove disks from their enclosures and place them in the company's unique Data Eradicator system chassis. The Data Eradicator then performs the minimum required three passes of binary rewrites (over each sector and bit) according to the DoD 5220.22-M standard.
...And proving it
Once the rewrites are complete, the unit automatically generates a customizable XML/PDF certificate for each disk, showing the (embedded) serial number of the disk, the number of passes made, the time and date of the operation, and the names of the technicians and witnesses present. In this way, PeakData can guarantee to its customers that the DoD 5220.22-M disk-eradication standard has been met - and that all of the old data has been purged.
Each Data Eradicator unit can process up to 36 disks at a time - and as many 10 units can be implemented simultaneously: which means that the systems can process 360 disks, or almost 15 terabytes, at once. And the unit is highly secure, according to Curtis, having no writable media of its own; instead, the Data Eradicator's specialized operating system and logic are contained solely on read-only CD/DVDs. The eradication system works with SCSI, FATA, mainframe or open-systems disks. Or go to http://www.sencilo.com/services-eradication.php
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/products-security.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage and security solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral
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