In a recent interview, a Seagate executive highlighted the development of the ‘terabyte life’.
As the size of storage personal storage devices shrinks, the amount their owners expect them to contain continues to ramp upwards sharply, a concept related to hard disc drive products maker Seagate’s notion of the ‘terabyte life’. In an interview with the BBC, Rob Pait, Seagate’s director of consumer electronic marketing, examined this phenomenon in depth.
One of the key comments made was the recognition that application usage is a critical driver in the growing demand for larger volumes of personal storage. Although mainly pertaining to consumer usage, the same arguments can be applied to an enterprise context. We can look forward to a time when the form factor of storage becomes small enough for even the busiest executives to literally carry around the organization’s data along with their own – although this would complicate some matters, such as synchronization and disaster recovery.
The idea of people walking out of the office carrying the most sensitive operational data might make the blood of some readers run cold, especially those involved in security. Even worse is the fact that this element of the ‘terabyte lifestyle’ is already with us – using devices such as USB sticks and iPods, employees can already stroll out of the building unknown to anyone carrying megabytes of (potentially sensitive) corporate data.
Close management of personal storage is a problem that will become more serious as the months go by, and it is already emerging as an area that needs to be addressed. Identity management and encryption solutions represent good starting points for the control of personal data, and also contribute to ensuring that devices enabling such storage can be positioned as assets rather than threats to an organization.
Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)
