by Tim Reilly

Next-Generation Data Protection Through Zettaset

       

We recently had an incredible opportunity to virtually present during Red Hat’s OpenShift Challenge Week discussing what the next generation of data protection looks like, the importance of unified encryption and what organizations need to do to get there.

It was truly an honor to be able to share our encryption philosophy and vision. If you’re interested in checking out the session, here is a link to the recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJDCt4g5Odk

The Challenges of Securing Data in Modern Environments

Trust is absolutely essential when it comes to data protection and data sharing. In today’s competitive landscape, we need to be able to share data, as it generates enormous benefits for organizations of all sizes. However, you simply cannot leverage the true power of data without ensuring its security beforehand.

Environments are growing increasingly complex, which has created numerous challenges organizations have to address to secure sensitive data. One of the most important is being able to share data while maintaining data ownership – without this capability, you simply cannot share data securely. In addition, mounting regulations make maintaining compliance with privacy laws a top priority for all businesses, and the transition to DevOps creates new data security gaps organizations must fill.

In addition, 5G and edge computing have created its own set of challenges, as its main function is to be closer to the edge and have the data extract value without bouncing back and forth. This makes having a consistent and unified data protection strategy across these environments even more pivotal.

Overcoming These Common Challenges

So, how can organizations take the steps to modernize their data protection strategies and meet these emerging requirements? From our experience helping countless customers do just that, we have boiled it down to the following Top 3 to get you started on the journey.

  • Encryption must follow storage: Containers will share storage in multi-tenant environments, but because of this, you cannot share the encryption keys. Otherwise, one compromised container compromises the entire environment. It is pivotal to keep the keys separate and away from the data.
  • Storage must be independent of the host and containers: Using a legacy approach of hardware-defined storage provisioning will lead to data loss if the host reboots or dies. Next-generation approaches are necessary.
  • Separation of duties: Developers and platform operators should not have visibility into or knowledge of the encryption keys and processes. This means robust processes should be in place for managing responsibility with different developers and IT teams. Encryption must be granular yet remain completely transparent.

While Kubernetes secrets offers a great way to store credentials and some data security elements, it does not provide true data protection. Full disk encryption software is that last layer of security, providing minimal performance impact, complete transparency, automated key policy and administration, secure removal of compromised nodes and protects the data-in-place.

Unifying Data Protection Across Any Environment

With enterprise environments more complex than ever, organizations must unify their data protection solutions to centrally manage them. This is the core value of our Encryption Management Console – which empowers customers to consolidate their virtual, physical, cloud and edge encryption and manage it through a single pane of glass.

The best part? The technology is completely vendor agnostic, integrating with third-party key managers to ensure customers can manage encryption across the entire organization through one interface, regardless of the providers they use. For Red Hat users, this is especially powerful, as it enables them to unify data protection management across both OpenShift and RHEL, while also encrypting data at rest in RHEL infrastructure.

By taking this crucial step to modernizing data protection, customers can let security enable their business, allowing them to:

  • Confidently focus on driving innovation
  • Dramatically reduce the risk of security breaches and data theft
  • Ensure developers are no longer required to make security decisions
  • Achieve regulatory compliance for sensitive data

While no one security technology is a silver bullet, one thing is for certain: modern environments require modern approaches to data protection.

If you’re interested in learning how you can up-level data security for your organization, check out our virtual presentation with RedHat or drop us a line here. We would love to hear from you!