Iron Mountain Touts Value of Encryption

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October 3, 2005 (Computerworld) -- Off-site data archiving vendor Iron Mountain Inc. last week signed a deal to use Decru Inc.'s technology to encrypt all of its internal data that's backed up to digital tape.
Iron Mountain executives said the move was made in part to set an example for customers, though IT managers at the Storage Decisions conference in New York last week downplayed the need for such tools.
Leonard Lu, a network architect at TD Waterhouse Group Inc. in New York, said his network provides security for data that's actively being used. Lu said that encrypting archived data is simply too much of a hassle. "The question is, do we want to encrypt data right down to the last digit?" he said.
Despite those doubts, "we're trying to make sure the industry is aware that encryption is a key technology to be embraced," said Kevin Roden, CIO at Boston-based Iron Mountain.
Since February, security breaches have led to the loss of unencrypted data at several high-profile companies, including Bank of America Corp., Ameritrade Holding Corp., ChoicePoint Inc., LexisNexis Group and Time Warner Inc.
In Time Warner's case, tapes that contained private information on 600,000 former and current employees were lost in May during a routine shipment to an Iron Mountain archival facility .
Iron Mountain said that while there are several options for implementing encryption -- including backup software and application-based technology -- large companies with expanding volumes of information and shrinking backup windows need faster throughput for backing up data.
"We had to find a solution to encrypt our data and still maintain backup windows. That ruled out software-based encryption, which introduces substantial overhead," Roden said.

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