Over the past three years, homeland security has been a major
priority for North America and around the world. On a daily basis,
people have been tuning in to hear the most recent information on
the war on terror and determine the latest national threat level.
Whether it has been Code Orange or Code Yellow, the public
understands the scope of threats against our country and our U.S.
neighbours and takes homeland security very seriousl, as it
safeguards our citizens, borders and infrastructure. Along with the
physical meaning of the term, homeland security addresses
information security across a wide spectrum of telecommunications,
power distribution, public health, law enforcement and vital
government services.
Information security consists of ongoing efforts to protect the
transmission, integrity and storage of information from both
internal and external threats. These threats can range from
physical attacks and natural disasters to viruses and worms,
hostile intelligence-gathering and even biological attack.
Protection must cover data and applications, networks, equipment
and facilities, as well as IT and personnel. It must also extend
across governmental units and contractors.
A disaster can ultimately cripple our ability to deploy
military, first responder and law enforcement resources, maintain
vital services, issue drivers licences, and even collect taxes. At
the same time, security and other reviews have highlighted gaps and
weaknesses in capabilities to protect computers, communications and
data. To address these shortcomings, government units must take
immediate steps to identify information security threats, protect
IT resources and ensure continuance of operations.
Both the private and public sectors are now emphasizing
information security. However, information security in the public
sector is complicated by both the ramifications of an attack and an
abundance of disparate heterogeneous systems within and among
government units.
While the private sector can limit access, many government units
are required to provide access to public services. The drive toward
intergovernmental and departmental information sharing, especially
among law enforcement agencies, also makes it harder to balance
access and security. Information superiority, or the gathering,
analyzing and sharing of relevant information, facilitates the
timely and effective deployment of our defence resources. In order
to meet these demands, organizations are turning to an information
infrastructure solution, honing in on three critical elements b
consolidation, control and continuity b to more efficiently deploy
and manage resources while quickly responding to adversity:
Consolidation: The consolidation of servers and storage allows
for significantly higher utilization rates. Consolidation reduces
the amount of storage a company needs to buy and manage and allows
staff to spend less time juggling complexity and more time driving
the business forward.
Control: An IT organization's ability to manage complexity
through centralized storage management enables it to
"automatically" control its many devices, quickly execute tasks and
assign processes across the entire heterogeneous environment.
Leveraging powerful management tools to simplify storage
administration will determine whether or not an organization can
meet or exceed its agreed upon levels of service.
Continuity: Protecting information assets through robust
business continuity can reduce the risks inherent in having
numerous points of control and back-up devices. Once the above
consolidation and control capabilities are in place, continuity
steps in to measure and protect information while guaranteeing the
safety and security of both local and remote information.
A networked storage solution sets up a single unified
infrastructure that accelerates the flow of information and breaks
down any barriers between diverse technologies and stove-piped
infrastructures.
What's more, it can enable IT managers to build an
infrastructure that will ensure survivability and resilience by
including:
Information centricity: Allows for the consolidation of
information throughout the enterprise into central locations,
enabling IT managers to leverage information, rather than merely
managing technology. Without consolidated and shared information,
an organization cannot fully meet its goals and objectives.
Heterogeneous connectivity: Unlike traditional server-based
storage, an advanced information infrastructure stores, retrieves
and connects to data from all major computing platforms including:
both mainframe and open systems environments, networks, file
servers, web servers and management interfaces.
Cascadability: Enterprise storage is cascadable, meaning it can
be re-assigned over time so that it is a re-usable and non-obsolete
resource, ensuring that information can be utilized b even when
applications or other IT equipment are discarded, upgraded and
replaced.
Information management: A common information management
environment simplifies tasks and provides a centrally managed point
of control. For example, it enables seamless backup and restore
capability, and delivery of user performance data for every
platform, while driving the standardization of IT processes
throughout the enterprise.
Information sharing: Advanced software intelligence bridges
stove-piped mainframe and open systems environments, allowing
information to be shared without depending on traditional IP
network based techniques.
Information protectionand survivability: Enterprise storage
provides reliable mission continuance protection and continuity of
operations against planned and unplanned outages through diverse
features. This ensures maximum protection and virtually 100 per
cent data availability. Together, these attributes can provide the
ability to leverage a single enterprise infrastructure resulting in
one way of sharing, protecting and managing information. It will
help drive standardization to reduce cost, complexity and
redundancy without sacrificing the flexibility to support mission
critical applications. And through a flexible architecture, it has
the ability to change and evolve based on requirements while
eliminating the costly replication of data, equipment and
training.
An information infrastructure can help government agencies
manage their network-attached storage (NAS) and storage area
network (SAN) environments with a unified view of all their
information assets. They can then manage more information, more
simply, at lower cost b and respond more quickly to changing
needs.
Whether an agency's data storage devices are from a single
vendor or multiple vendors, it can consolidate all agency data into
a single, centralized system. Such a system means that information
can be accessed no matter where it resides, regardless of whether
it is a centrally located database or a remotely connected laptop
computer.
This paradigm shift from processor-centric to
information-centric computing provides many benefits critical to
data protection. Advanced data storage networking technology can be
used to create a heterogeneous storage environment that embodies
these attributes and reduces the friction of information
access.
One of the key questions asked is "How many copies of
information are needed to ensure its survivability?" The answer
lies in an infrastructure's capacity to replicate large quantities
of information without affecting production access to the source.
Through replication solutions, an infrastructure can function
consistently across a wide range of operating environments and
databases, at the same time as supporting local and remote wide
area replication with minimal bandwidth requirements.
Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions are readily available
that provide application independent, differential, remote
replication.
Government managers must also keep their eyes on the future.
Advancing initiatives, architectures and technologies will deliver
new security capabilities as well as threats. As with private
industry, the public sector must prepare for the increasing
adoption of web services and wireless technologies. Managers must
also prepare to deliver the information security required by
demands for the inter-governmental collaboration that breaks down
inefficient organizational silos and reduces the intelligence and
other gaps among various government units.
While important first steps have been taken to review government
information security and address vulnerabilities, more must be
done.
Information protection must become a part of agency culture and
be incorporated into almost every initiative. Some are even
recommending that security compliance be part of every personnel
evaluation. Static security policies must be replaced with
initiatives that continuously improve b and test b capabilities to
protect, mitigate and recover from attacks. 064280
Nick Lisi (lisi_nick@emc.com) is managing
director of EMC Canada of Toronto, a supplier of products, services
and solutions for information management and storage.
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