Storage Industry from a Technology, Development and Customer perspective and the competitive issues encountered throughout the lifecycle of storage products & data management solutions.
Some of the greatest injustices are often propagated by the most powerful forces - even in plain sight of many witnesses who stay on the sidelines. The bravery of Whistleblowing is within everyone's reach when you're only exposing yourself to the backlash. However when the risk and sacrifice extends to others around you (including loved ones) going public is not always the right answer.
Forrester Research once again confirms what industry watchers like us already suspect. They report that the severe economic downturn upon us will significantly increase litigation this year. As Beth's StorageSoup blog points out today, IT departments are struggling to address last year's pace of archiving and discovery requests, leaving them in no position to handle the anticipated increases for 2009. In light of that, the last thing strained IT departments need to worry about is wasting precious time and resources on redundant data audits verifying assumptions about the fundamental integrity of their digital archives. The same archives that are supposed to protect the integrity of the parent organization itself.
If you've followed the "Exposed" blog this week, you won't be surprised by the copious feedback to my post about EMC Centera's weak reputation for data integrity. It turns out many subject-matter experts did indeed have lots of revealing professional insight into the situation. Yet unfortunately due to the collateral damage to their parent companies, all were reluctant to publish their thoughts publicly on this blog.
LOST is one of my favorite TV shows, but it is a work of fiction. Reality can be much harsher.
If you left your coat with the coat check service at a restaurant or theater, you would naturally expect to get it back upon producing the claim ticket. How upset would you be if the restaurant or theater lost your coat in this scenario? What are your legal options or reimbursement expectations in that case?
Now what if this same scenario involves your car left with a valet parking attendant? The stakes just got much higher. But it doesn't stop there. These metaphors can sadly escalate into nightmarish proportions when dealing with corporate data worth billions of dollars - or in the most extreme cases - patient data which of course is priceless.
Data breaches continue to plague organizations around the world. The bewildering array of storage security options available to the marketplace is part of the problem, not the solution. Islands of storage beget fragmented data security, due to inconsistent policies, implementations and enforcement. NetApp recognized this dilemma many years ago, motivating our DECRU acquisition. This week we announced the latest milestone in our Unified Storage Security strategy.
It turns out today (and the last Friday of every July) is SysAdminDay, so this post is rather timely, despite the festive nature of today.
It'll Never Happen to Me
NetApp customers reading my blog and related media coverage over the past week have asked "Do I *really* need to do this?"and much more interestingly "What else will be fixed if we upgrade to the latest recommended releases of Data ONTAP (7.0.7, 7.1.3 or 7.2.5.1)?"
Good questions I thought, so I checked with our security team and here's what I found out.
There were a number of other security-related fixes included in these latest releases of Data ONTAP which have nothing to do with SnapLock, but nevertheless close recently discovered vulnerabilities also exposed as part of our increased scope of testing. As with most fixed security vulnerabilities, the severity of these range from minor to serious, but none are critical.
Some of the greatest injustices are often propagated by the most powerful forces - even in plain sight of many witnesses who stay on the sidelines. The bravery of Whistleblowing is within everyone's reach when you're only exposing yourself to the backlash. However when the risk and sacrifice extends to others around you (including loved ones) going public is not always the right answer.
