Encrypt your data on tape
I was sitting in traffic last week and saw something that caught my eye. It wasn’t an exotic vehicle, nor was it someone broke down on the side of the road. As I focused more, I could see a large cargo carrying truck, and its back door was completely up. I found this to be quite odd, because in any major metropolitan area, trucks with cargo always have their backdoor closed and latched to keep its cargo contained. As I sat there, I started thinking about what if the cargo fell out going to down the road. What if that cargo had all of my banking and financial records stored on tapes and it fell out of the truck. The truth is, most companies today still send data offsite via tape, and sometimes your data may not be as protected as you think.
After seeing this, I started wondering, what are businesses I use to purchase goods or bank with doing to protect my information. When I got home, I started doing some research and came across some very interesting and different tape encryption options:
- Encrypt on the host
- Encrypt in the network
- Encrypt on the tape drive
Each option has a specific benefit, but after comparing all three, I have come to the conclusion that encrypting on the tape drive might be the best option for data leaving your data center. Encrypting on the tape drive adds a strong measure of security to the data stored on tape media without the process overhead or performance degradation associated with host-based encryption, or the expense and complexity involved with a dedicated encryption appliance. So the next time you see a cargo truck with the back doors open you don’t have to worry.
For more information on how you can make your tape backups more secure, visit us here.
