IfG.CC - The Institute for eGovernment

Decru, Inc., the leader in networked data storage security, today announced that the Italian government will use Decru DataFort(TM) storage security appliances to secure the personal information of Italian citizens, as the country launches its e-government initiative. In an unprecedented effort to automate services and improve communication between city governments, service providers, and Italian citizens, Italy's government is working with AGSM Telecomunicazioni, a multi-utility provider, to build a secure e-commerce infrastructure. The objective of the initiative is to improve accessibility to all government services: citizens will be able do everything from paying property taxes to ordering new phone or gas services via the web. AGSM is initially building a datacenter that will support the city of Verona, along with hundreds of surrounding towns and cities. Once the model is established in Verona, AGSM plans to replicate similar datacenters across Italy, continuing to expand its capabilities as the infrastructure becomes established.

At the heart of the solution is a robust storage area network (SAN), with a wide range of applications that will feed information into centralized storage. In light of privacy concerns around aggregating financial and personal data of citizens, it was important that AGSM be able to secure this data in storage, and prevent unauthorized access by datacenter staff, contractors, service providers or external attackers.

Decru DataFort FC520 storage security appliances will be used to encrypt data in the SAN, as well as enable the appropriate authentication and access controls. DataFort was chosen because of its wire-speed encryption performance, operational transparency, and interoperability with the broad range of vendors chosen for this project.

"The adoption and success of this e-government initiative rests in our ability to ensure citizens and service providers that sensitive data is only seen by those who are authorized," said Marco Pissarello, Business Development Manager, AGSM Telecomunicazioni. "This data might include names, addresses, credit card and billing information or health records. Decru DataFort will ensure that all sensitive information in our data center is protected from both insiders as well as outside attackers."

"AGSM is building an infrastructure that will offer citizens an easier way to manage their affairs with the government, while reducing the overhead, record and account duplication, and costs associated with running these programs the traditional way," said Joanna Shields, vice president, Europe for Decru. "Decru's security appliances will be an instrumental component of the security strategy for protecting citizen information."

Decru DataFort security appliances enable enterprises and government organizations to secure data assets with military-grade encryption, authentication, and secure access controls. Providing security for data at rest in storage is a growing concern for IT organizations worldwide, due to increasing internal and external attacks, as well as escalating security and privacy regulations. Penalties for regulatory non-compliance include significant fines, as well as civil and criminal prosecution.

The Decru DataFort storage security appliance is the first product to provide wire-speed encryption for NAS, SAN, DAS and tape storage environments. Combining strong 256-bit AES encryption and authentication with hardware-based key management, Decru DataFort creates a powerful, yet manageable security solution for both enterprise and government customers. The solution is based on widely accepted industry standards, and can be deployed transparently without disruption to clients, servers, storage devices, and or user workflow. Decru DataFort has been tested with a wide variety of storage and networking technologies.

Quelle: PRNewswire