Overview
Qsent is the leading provider of Contact Identity Services based in Beaverton, Oregon. Entrusted by corporations, Qsent ensures that sensitive data will always be up-to-date and accurate, while safe and secure from prying eyes.
When Qsent was selected by six major wireless carriers to create and manage the first-of-its-kind nationwide 411 directory service for cellular telephone numbers, the company realized that it needed to shore up its disaster recovery strategy. This meant sending backup tapes – each with more than 2.5 terabytes of data – between data centers and storing them offsite. To keep all its data safe and secure, Qsent chose NeoScale’s CryptoStor wire-speed tape security appliance to encrypt and decrypt data. Since turning to NeoScale, Qsent has been able to:
-Keep sensitive information secure at all times
-Implement different levels of security for onsite and offsite tape storage
-Encrypt and decrypt data without impacting back-up processes
The Challenge
Used by organizations worldwide for fraud assessment, customer development, and collections and recovery applications, Qsent is the trusted authority in online contact authentication services. Its multi-terabyte, multi-billion-record databases provides accurate, up-to-date customer information, including telephone numbers and street addresses for individuals, companies and government agencies throughout the United States. This kind of information must be kept safe from unauthorized access or worse yet, theft – at all times.
For disaster recovery purposes, Qsent must ensure that its mirrored data centers in Portland and Chicago are in synch. Because the databases are too large to do this efficiently in real time over the network, the company ships backup tapes between the data centers. The challenge is making sure that the data remains secure during transit.
The Solution
Qsent purchased two NeoScale CryptoStor Tape 700 appliances, one for each of its data centers. The NeoScale appliance sat in front of the tape library, compressing, encrypting, and digitally signing data as it went to tape or virtual tape. Tightly integrated with Qsent’s existing Veritas NetBackup solution, the NeoScale appliance understood NetBackup encryption policies, so that tapes destined for different locations could be encrypted according to different policies – without human intervention.
Data encrypted with one NeoScale CryptoStor Tape appliance could be decrypted using another one, which was a key advantage for Qsent. According to Olson, “Sharing encrypted data between like devices in geographically disparate sites is important to us, because we often use the backup infrastructure to get large sets of data from Portland to Chicago – and vice versa – to keep the mirrors in place. With NeoScale, we can do this easily and quickly, whereas some of the competitive products we evaluated did not have this feature.”
The Result
The CryptoStor appliance encrypted and decrypted Qsent’s data at wire-speed without affecting the backup infrastructure. CryptoStor dynamically intercepted backup/restore communications between hosts and tape libraries, centrally managing and fully off-loading tape media security functions. “The NeoScale appliance encrypts and decrypts on the fly, so the backup infrastructure is never affected by the encryption process. We never experience any performance degradation,” said Olson. With help from NeoScale, Qsent kept its data current and its data centers mirrored, while keeping the company’s name out of security breach headlines.
NeoScale At A Glance
-Founded in 2000, NeoScale is the trusted leader in enterprise storage security and a recognized authority in Global Key Management
-Headquartered in the Silicon Valley, CA, NeoScale solutions are globally deployed in more than 35 countries
-Tamper proof appliance-based solutions with true wire-speed encryption of data on disk, virtual tape, or tape media
-Award-winning global key management to ensure customers’ business continuity and productivity in sharing sensitive information across the extended enterprise
-Successfully driving partnerships with vendors of encryption devices and software applications that are deployed throughout the enterprise IT infrastructure, from mainframes to open systems.
-Nearly 300 customers worldwide, including a fifth of the Global 50 companies, Fortune 500 financial institutions, healthcare organizations, domestic and foreign government agencies, as well as small-medium enterprises
-For more information, visit www.neoscale.com.
