Iron Mountain Taps Decru for Data Encryption

Iron Mountain is putting its money where its mouth is and encrypting its data tapes with Decru’s DataFort storage security appliance.

Iron Mountain recommended data encryption in April after several high-profile incidents of lost backup tapes.

At the time, Iron Mountain cited an Enterprise Strategy Group study that found that only 7% of users encrypt backup tapes. Iron Mountain CIO Kevin Roden said he thinks that figure has changed little despite high-profile incidents involving the likes of Bank of America and CitiFinancial.

“We’re announcing this to try to move the market,” he said.

Roden said the company conducted an “extensive analysis and evaluation of technologies” for data encryption. As a result, the company is recommending appliance-based encryption to its 40,000 off-site data protection customers — and using the technology for its own data tapes.

Encryption appliances deliver a high-throughput, low-impact configuration, allowing use of compression and requiring lower management overhead, Roden said. That means that businesses can secure the data without compromising disaster recovery protection or making significant changes to their current backup processes, he said.

Roden said Iron Mountain chose Decru over competitor NeoScale because of its ease of installation and management, but he said both appliances offer similar performance.

Roden said the high-profile tape losses have done little to affect either the tape or online backup business. Iron Mountain’s tape business has remained steady, he said, while its electronic vaulting service continues to grow at a healthy 20 to 25 percent clip.

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