Nexsan Expands Storage Market with First Secure Storage Appliance
Company’s Assureon combines security, ILM technology, and disk storage into single architecture for midrange and enterprise environments
WOODLAND HILLS, Calif., August 22, 2005 – Nexsan Technologies, a leader in innovative storage solutions, today announced Assureon™, the first integrated Secure Storage Appliance. Assureon is a total solution for markets concerned with data privacy, data theft, and compliance (ILM) such as corporations with electronic documents, check and medical imaging, e-mail, and all other forms of fixed content, including digital broadcast content and backup/archived critical data.
Assureon provides the utmost in data security through advanced encryption, authentication, and data protection technologies, combined with fully featured lifecycle management, RAID hardware, and content-addressed storage technology, along with seamless support for tape and optical -- never before achieved in a single, fully integrated networked-storage system.
“In a recent ESG survey of 232 storage professionals, 42 percent said that recent security breaches have led them to assess storage security risks and implement specific technology countermeasures. This announcement demonstrates that Nexsan understands these critical requirements and is delivering intelligent solutions for long-term archiving, management, and disposition,” said Jon Oltsik, senior analyst of information security at the Enterprise Strategy Group. “Companies looking to safely store and protect their organizations’ data would be hard pressed to find another integrated solution on the market today that satisfies all of these requirements in a more cost-effective manner.”
With Assureon, Nexsan has responded to end users’ demands for a single product that features encryption with content addressed storage, ILM, and patent-pending security features in a disk-based system designed to be a “hardened” archive. This scalable, plug-and-play solution incorporates Nexsan’s own high-density SATA RAID hardware combined with robust technology designed to store, manage, protect, dispose, and provide fast, easy access to fixed content and reference data in a cost-effective manner.
“Nexsan Assureon further fulfils our mandate to change the way IT managers store and protect information,” said Philip Black, CEO of Nexsan. “We believe that eventually all information will be securely stored. We don’t leave our homes, cars, or valuables unlocked. Why would we leave our valuable data unlocked? We all need to secure our information on all types of media; disk, tape, and optical -- all that’s been missing is the right technology.”
An industry first in secure storage, Assureon provides extensive data security measures, including 256-bit AES encryption; authentication, tamper-proof time stamping, serialization, and self auditing; data protection systems that ensure information is not tampered with, corrupted, changed, or erased until the end of its retention period; and crypto shredding of individual encryption keys to assure that the destroyed information cannot be read, including any residing on offline media such as tape and optical. Assureon’s advanced, automated encryption key management system provides support for multiple offsite repositories of keys, which are themselves encrypted, as well as active deposits of file manifest information with a neutral third party.
Assureon offers significant TCO savings to organizations through the automation of operational steps, self-management, and self-healing capabilities, and its CAS single-instance store technology, which identifies duplicate data files and stores only one version. This results in less storage needed, and in reduced network bandwidth and overall cost. Assureon’s performance and capacity scale easily and independently -- from a few terabytes to multiple petabytes -- ensuring even midrange companies can enjoy the enterprise-level privacy, security, and compliance benefits that Assureon provides.
“Standalone RAID storage costs nearly $3,000 per terabyte,” said Diamond Lauffin, executive vice president of Nexsan. It is a testament to Nexsan engineers and developers that we can offer a complete secure storage appliance with management, RAID storage, processing, and networking that can be configured for as low as $4,500 per terabyte,”
Assureon delivers another industry first; combining CAS with secure encryption on removable media, reducing costs, and preventing unauthorized access to stored data, including security breaches, attacks, and lost or stolen tapes. Assureon provides absolute redundancy with no single point of failure, WORM functionality, and optional remote replication across the WAN to keep duplicate files at a remote site. Applications interface with Assureon without the need for APIs through patent-pending technology that provides metadata and policy exchange through standard NFS/CIFS interfaces.
“With identity theft and data loss dominating the news, security of information at companies is quickly becoming a top priority,” said Steve Bishop, CTO of Veristor Systems, an Atlanta-based data storage solutions and services provider. “Customers who were previously unwilling -- or unable -- to invest in multiple heterogeneous storage and data management solutions now have the option of implementing Nexsan’s Assureon secure storage appliance, which can replace two or more solutions while making it more affordable for our customers.”
Assureon will be available through Nexsan’s worldwide channel of authorized system integrators and value added resellers.
About Nexsan Technologies
Nexsan Technologies has changed the way IT managers are storing and protecting corporate data. For more information, please see the company's Web site at http://www.nexsan.com.
Nexsan and Assureon are trademarks of Nexsan Technologies. All other brand and product names are, or may be, trademarks of their respective owners.