Qsent

While large public companies have borne the brunt of well publicized tape breaches over the past year or so, smaller companies have as much or more to lose from compromised data. (See The Year in Insecurity and A Tale of Lost Tapes.)

Ask directory services provider Qsent. As a private firm, Qsent is spared reporting the type of tape breaches that have embarrassed larger companies. Still, Qsent hopes to grow into one of those larger public companies, and its business demands the utmost confidence from its customers and partners.

Qsent maintains databases of updated telephone information that companies use to verify identities of potential customers and business partners. The company is also working on a directory of cell phone numbers for leading wireless carriers. With consumers skittish about their information getting into the wrong hands, Qsent can't afford even one incident of lost data.

These high stakes convinced Qsent UNIX systems administrator Derek Olsen that his company needed to encrypt its tapes.

Read the rest the story on Dark Reading.Dave Raffo, News Editor, Byte and Switch