Holistic Cyber Protection with Storage Security

Upcoming technologies, especially Internet of Things, coupled with always-on connectivity and social media are leading to an explosion in the volumes of data being created every day. This data must reside somewhere in order to be processed or retrieved later. And it's not just storage, the data must also be protected so it does not fall into the wrong hands. As a result there is an ever-increasing need to secure these data storage systems.

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) defines storage security as the “convergence of storage, networking, and security disciplines, technologies, and methodologies used for protection and security of digital assets such as storage systems, infrastructure and the data.” Storage security also means resources can be allowed only through authorized—whether physical or digital.

Multiple Challenges

Storage security is facing newer challenges with the rapid advancements in technology. Take the cloud for instance. More and more organizations are migrating their workloads to the cloud. It does make it easier for users to access shared computing networks and/or add new resources/applications, but it also makes the data residing in the cloud more vulnerable to cyber attacks. To further worsen the problem, 71% of the security professionals globally find it a big challenge to secure data in the cloud with conventional security methods, says Gemalto's 2018 Cloud Security Research.

Choose an Appropriate Method

Organizations can deploy an appropriate storage security strategy according to the chosen storage technology—Network Attached Storage (NAS), Storage Area Network (SAN), Network Unified Storage (NUS), and/or Virtualization. From physical protection to software-based security, there's a variety of storage security methods that organizations can choose from. Some of the popular methods including encryption, access control, layered storage architecture, and frequent backups. A 2018 Gemalto survey reveals that although encryption remains the top choice for 91% of respondents for the next two years, only 47% respondents actually use it for data protection in the cloud.

Security protocols like MD5, RSA, PDP, PoR are already known in the storage security circles. But newer techniques and models are being proposed for greater security. One such technique is the Multi-Agent System (MAS) which is considered especially beneficial for security of cloud data storage (CDS).

Given the heightened threats to stored data, organizations must understand that storage security should be a key component of their overall cyber security strategy for holistic protection.

The article has been written by Neetu Katyal, Content and Marketing Consultant

She can be reached here.