SNIA Launches New Storage Security Group

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Board of Directors approved the charter for the formation of the Storage Security Industry Forum (SSIF) last week during a meeting in San Jose, Calif.

According to the SNIA, the forum is a customer- and market-focused vendor consortium dedicated to increasing the availability of robust storage security solutions. The forum will fulfill this mission by helping to identify best practices on how to build secure storage networks and promoting these standards-based solutions.

“Users of storage networks have identified security as one of their primary concerns. The Storage Security Industry Forum will enable SNIA members to collaborate in a vendor-neutral environment and create a focal point for industry and user interchange on secure storage networks,” said Brad Stamas, Chairman of the SNIA.

The Storage Security Industry Forum will strive to assure that customers’ requirements are being met with existing solutions and standards, according to Mike Alvarado, the newly elected chairman of the forum. “The forum will conduct research and compile a database of the features, benefits, cost justification, ROI calculation methods as well as the best practices of storage security,” said Alvarado.

“This information will be disseminated to users and to SNIA’s industry partners. We believe that this new information will have a significantly positive effect on future best practices and can also be used to model the immediate deployment of even more secure storage networks. This is clearly in line with what customers are asking for.”

The forum, which is open to all SNIA member companies, held a preliminary formation meeting last month to review the draft charter and determine the scope of the forum’s work. Companies that have helped to launch the forum include Adaptec, Brocade, Computer Associates, Hewlett-Packard Company, IBM, Infinity I/O, JNI Corporation, McDATA, NeoScale Systems, QLogic, Seagate Technologies, Spectra Logic, and Zyfer.

Mike Karp, senior analyst at Enterprise Management Associates of Boulder, Colo., agreed that the SNIA forum can serve an important role within the industry. “There is an increasing need for research that will help advance technologies in the storage security arena. SNIA vendor members and users working together to develop best practices will accelerate the adoption of sound storage security solutions.”