Network Appliance Inc. will announce on Tuesday that it has worked with Decru Inc. and MDY Advanced Technologies Inc. to create an encrypted records management system that meets a U.S. Department of Defense management standard.
NetApp’s FAS server and NearStore arrays combined with the Decru DataFort encryption appliance and MDY’s FileSurf records management software have now achieved Department of Defense 5015.2-STD certification, said Mike Marchi, NetApp’s senior director of marketing.
The certification standard contains hundreds of different requirements which, when implemented, are designed to ensure that many kinds of documents – files or e-mail messages, for example – are not inappropriately deleted or altered.
The standard was created by the Department of Defense but is now being considered by other government agencies and by the financial services and health care industries, according to Kevin Brown, Decru’s vice president of marketing. “The 5015 standard has become what some call the gold standard for records management and the security around it,” he said.
The inclusion of Decru’s DataFort encryption appliance in the set of products means not only that documents will be managed according to the 5015.2-STD standard, they will also be viewable by only authorized parties, according to Mark Moerdler, MDY’s president. Malicious hackers or even inquisitive network administrators will not be able to view data stored on the NetApp systems, he said.
“The DoD (5015.2 standard) locks the front door. This solution locks the back door,” Moerdler said.
The set of certified products will be available on Tuesday. Pricing will vary depending on the amount of storage used but will start at around US$60,000, the companies said.