IBM already ships tape backup encryption software, and it has promised that this year it will ship high-end mainframe tape drives featuring native encryption, as has Sun Microsystems Inc, via its StorageTek brand.
Tape encryption hardware is also shipping from suppliers such as Network Appliance Inc, via its subsidiary Decru, and NeoScale Systems Inc. To cap it off, CA said that are many encryption software utilities shipping for the z/OS, although it said that these are relatively unpolished tools, and are not integrated with other tape management tools.
We’re the first in the market to handle data from any application, with full key management, and with a GUI that interfaces into other tape management systems, said Mary Cochetti, CA product marketing manager.
The new CA software is called BrightStor Tape Encryption. Despite being purely a software product, CA is describing it as an appliance because ours is the only software doing encryption on the fly.
BTE is integrated with CA’s existing CA-1 and CA-Dynam/TLMS tape management tools, and according to CA is already in the process of being integrated with other tools such IBM’s tape handling software, via an API in the CA software.
CA claimed that its tape encryption tool will be cheaper to use than IBM’s equivalent software, because IBM unlike CA requires customers to buy extra licenses when using its software to handle data with anything other than IBM’s own DFDSS tape handling tool. Computer Business Review was unable to confirm this with IBM.
Compared to hardware encryption devices, CA said the BTE software will be cheaper because it will be free to implement at disaster recovery sites, or at the sites of business partners.
The BTE does not actually complete any data encryption itself, but passes that work to the cryptographic hardware on all the z/Series servers, via IBM’s Integrated Cryptography Services Facility, or ICSF API.
