Existing storage-encryption products also differ in terms of the types of storage devices they support. NeoScale, for example, offers a dedicated appliance for tape storage encryption but no NAS product. Decru offers a NAS product, but no tape encryption.
While not common now, storage encryption will eventually take hold in health care, financial services, and other heavily regulated industries in which organizations must care for customer and patient records for long periods, predicts Enterprise Storage Group's Marrone. Just how quickly storage encryption will become common even in those industries is open to question, however. That's because all of the encryption appliance solutions today are proprietary. With the exception of the IETF, which is expanding IPSec as an encryption standard for iSCSI-based networked storage, encryption-related standards work for Fibre Channel SANs is just beginning. So, predicts The451's Robinson, enterprises will be reluctant to invest in products that don't interoperate from a group of vendors that are relatively small and could, in the long run, be acquired.
"We expect it will be 12 to 18 months before we see significant enterprise traction for these technologies," Robinson says. "Many of these smaller companies will be acquired."
3. Weak device authentication
Since SAN fabrics are typically made up of many types of devices and are dynamic--with host-bus adapters, switches, storage arrays, etc., constantly being added--it's critical for enterprises to able to quickly and consistently authenticate storage elements. While switch makers such as Brocade and Cisco have recently beefed up security through strong authentication in their products, unfortunately today storage authentication standards are just emerging. Companies attempting to manage systems containing devices from many vendors will find little interoperability between SAN switch authentication schemes.
