Storage security has gone through a radical transformation in the recent past. A few years ago, storage security was virtually ignored, hidden behind perimeter firewalls, network security, and server safeguards. Once storage professionals realized that storage devices were vulnerable, they adopted a myopic focus on storage security disregarding the security activities in play around the enterprise. Finally, rationality overtook chaos - now storage security is being subsumed into enterprise security and compliance initiatives.

This paper follows the impact of security and compliance on storage technology and organizations over the past few years and concludes that:

• Storage security now fits into three buckets. Rather than focus on storage alone, CIOs should include storage into broader efforts focused on infrastructure security, data privacy and security, and IT governance.
• Storage security demands cooperation. Traditionally, storage organizations remained proudly independent from other IT groups but addressing security requires a lot more collaboration with other counterparts residing in security, networking, IT operations and compliance. This cooperative effort should be tightly managed in order to encourage communications, objectives, and common metrics.
• Storage managers would be well served by working with experienced vendors. Storage security demands knowledge of storage, security, networking, compliance, IT operations, and business processes. While this common set of skills is rare, HP is one vendor with all of the prerequisites. ESG believes that HP's vision around storage security products and services demonstrate its commitment to information security and its customers.