IBM Fortifies Tape Security

September 14th, 2006: Responding to increasing compliance demands being placed on enterprises, IBM has introduced a tape drive with full encryption. A first for the industry.

Based on open standards, the TS1120 tape drive can encrypt large files intended for data archiving, and do it at tape hardware speeds. IBM says it can encrypt data directly from mainframe, Linux, Windows or Unix systems, completely eliminating the need for host-based encryption systems.

The company says that the TS1120 also supports key management for tape organisation and retrieval. A Java based application, IBM Encryption Key Manager uses standard key repositories and encrypts data by application, system or tape library.

IBM has already deployed the drive at its Business Continuity and Resiliency Services (BCRS) recovery locations worldwide. For customers, the TS1120 drive can be installed in IBM and Sun/StorageTek tape libraries and has a capacity of 1.5TB.

The TS1120 is available now starting at US$35,000.

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