Page 40 - Security Today, March 2019

Secure Storage in the Age of Edge Computing and the Cloud
Companies need to rethink how they approach storage
BEy Richard Diver
nterprise data storage is not what it used to be. Back when IT was dominated by on-premises data centers, storage options were fairly straightforward and secur- ing storage resources was relatively simple compared with today’s far more complex storage landscape.
The rise of the cloud and the emergence of edge computing are changing the way organizations need to approach and manage their storage resources. There is no one-size-fits-all scenario. Requirements will vary within enterprises, and even within divisions and depart- ments of those enterprises.
How can companies know that they are making the right choices with regard to deploying secure storage resources? The following are some practices to help ensure that enterprise storage strategies are successful.
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Know What You Are Creating
When creating a storage strategy, it is vital that organizations know what they want to achieve with data storage and design the storage architecture to support the expected use cases.
While some use cases might appear more important than others, storage planning cannot take place in isolation. Supporting one use case at the expense of others in the organization leads to inefficiency. For example, at a healthcare provider such as a hospital, one use case could be storing data related to X-rays over a certain number of years; unique images which would rarely be accessed but persist for a long time.
A certain storage solution might be ideal for that purpose, and the radiology department will be set for data storage for years to come. What about other departments and their storage needs? The same
CLOUD STORAGE
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