FalconStor Software, a provider of data protection solutions, is now offering a disaster recovery (DR) automation tool as part of its FalconStor Continuous Data Protector (CDP) product line.

Idera, a provider of Microsoft SQL Server management and administration tools, has announced the latest version of its SQL Server backup and recovery solution, SQL safe 6.5. According to Idera, SQL safe reduces database backup time by up to 50% over native SQL backups, reduces backup disk space requirements by up to 95%, and enables complete "hands-free" automated backup of an organization's SQL Server infrastructure while ensuring compliance with backup and recovery policies.

SHARE convenes on February 27th in Anaheim, with an agenda packed with industry initiatives and knowledge-sharing on the latest best practices and technology trends. In this exclusive Q&A, SHARE president Janet Sun provides her vision for SHARE in the coming years.

Industry executives and Oracle product experts will present an in-depth look at security trends, best practices, and proven solutions during the Oracle Security Online Forum, a half-day online event, on Thursday, February 24 from 9 am to 1 pm PT/ 12 noon to 4 pm ET.

To help organizations prevent internal and external attacks from reaching their enterprise database targets, Oracle has introduced Oracle Database Firewall, which is intended to act as the "first line of defense for databases." According to Oracle, the new software solution monitors database activity on the network to help prevent unauthorized access, SQL injections, privilege or role escalation, and other external and internal attacks in real time.

Oracle has introduced the Oracle Cloud File System, which is designed to help organizations deploy their applications, databases, and storage in private clouds. It delivers a cloud infrastructure that provides network access, rapid elasticity and provisioning for pooled storage resources that are the key requirements for cloud computing. With Oracle Cloud File System customers can use Oracle Database features to manage application data stored outside of an Oracle Database.

To help organizations prevent internal and external attacks from reaching their enterprise database targets, Oracle has introduced Oracle Database Firewall, which is intended to act as the "first line of defense for databases." According to Oracle, the new software solution monitors database activity on the network to help prevent unauthorized access, SQL injections, privilege or role escalation, and other external and internal attacks in real time. "In the same way that most companies have deployed network firewalls to stop intruders from coming into their data centers," Vipin Samar, vice president of Database Security, Oracle, tells 5 Minute Briefing, "Oracle Database Firewall is blocking unauthorized traffic from getting to the database itself."

EnterpriseDB, which provides products, services, support and training based on the PostgreSQL open source database project, has announced the availability of three components that add security and replication technology for community PostgreSQL Server users - SQL/Protect, PL/Secure and xDB Replication ServerEnterpriseDB's Postgres Plus Standard Server 9.0 delivers the latest features in PostgreSQL 9.0, plus value-added tools and services providing organizations with a complete enterprise-ready database installation.

Vormetric, a provider of enterprise system encryption solutions, plans to announce tomorrow Vormetric Data Security for Amazon EC2, which enables organizations to remotely apply and manage transparent file-level encryption on data in Amazon EC2 (elastic compute cloud) environments. Vormetric has seen a surge in customer interest in leveraging cloud-based services, Gretchen Hellman, vice president of marketing and product management, Vormetric, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "The cost benefit and the IT agility benefits of the cloud are completely apparent, and so the question is: Why aren't more enterprises moving to the cloud - and that definitely is because of security concerns."

A new survey of 430 members of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) reveals that organizations lack a sense of urgency about securing critical data, and the greatest challenges to securing application and data environments are primarily organizational and budget related. The OAUG's 2011 Data Security report, "Managing Information in Insecure Times," was conducted by Unisphere Research, a division of Information today, Inc., in partnership with Application Security, Inc. (AppSec) in December 2010. Fifty-three percent of respondents stated that budget was the greatest impediment holding back information security efforts. Thirty-three percent claimed a lack of an understanding of the threats prevents them from rallying support for countermeasures. And more than one-quarter of respondents cited a disconnect between IT teams and executive management as a major impediment to implementing proper security measures.

Sepaton, Inc., a provider of enterprise-class disk-based data protection platforms, unveiled its next-generation platform, consisting of version 6.0 software, which drives its new S2100-ES2 Series 1910/2910 system. The new platform delivers grid scalability of both performance and capacity; high performance; multi-protocol support; high-reliability; and deduplication. The new product is both an enabler of private-cloud computing as well as a platform for the data protection capabilities required in enormous scale-out storage environments.

Oracle has announced a new enterprise tape storage product, which, the company says, provides high performance and low total cost of ownership at one-third to one-fifth the floor space of any tiered storage, archive or backup solution. The StorageTek T10000C tape drive "has the highest capacity and the highest throughput of anything out there by far," Tom Wultich, director of product management for Tape Storage at Oracle, tells 5 Minute Briefing. The StorageTek T10000C provides 5TB native capacity and 240MB/second native throughput, representing capacity and throughput increases over competitive products that help customers reduce the cost of enterprise storage while providing fast backup and archive solutions.

Trend Micro Incorporated, an internet security vendor, announced its security software for 64-bit IBM Lotus Domino platforms now extends to the IBM System z platform. The ScanMail Suite delivers anti-spam, anti-malware, web threat protection and content filtering to prevent data theft and loss.

Oracle has announced a new enterprise storage product, the StorageTek T10000C tape drive, which, the company says, provides high performance and low total cost of ownership at one-third to one-fifth the floor space of any tiered storage, archive or backup solution. "The new tape drive has the highest capacity and the highest throughput of anything out there by far," Tom Wultich, director of product management for Tape Storage at Oracle, tells 5 Minute Briefing.

Over the past 3 years, the IOUG ResearchWire studies conducted by Unisphere Research have focused on Oracle technology as well as trends affecting data professionals, allowing IT professionals to benchmark where their organizations stand within their own technology environment. Executive Summaries of all IOUG ResearchWire reports are publicly available for free download and full study reports are also available to IOUG members at no charge when they sign in with their user name and password.

3X Systems has released version 3.0 of its 500 and Tera Series remote backup appliances, capable of automatically backing up Microsoft Windows-based servers, workstations, and laptops over the internet to a central storage device that delivers data protection and disaster recovery capabilities. The new features in version 3.0 of the appliances provide more flexibility for users, Alan Arman, CEO, 3X, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "You utilize one console to back up your servers, your virtual environment, your laptops in the field, and back up remote offices, all managed under a policy-based back up. That saves administrators quite a bit of time."

Depending on their industry sectors, many database professionals have to deal with audits at some stage, often removing vital years off their lives and inches off their hairlines! Having worked as a DBA in the financial industry, I've experienced both internal and external auditor visits on multiple occasions. In all cases, we pretty much had to drop all other work to ensure they were provided with the relevant information, or to implement the changes they required so we could provide the information in the future. The auditors' levels of experience and understanding varied wildly. This was not their fault, as they are not paid to be database experts, but it could make them frustrating to work with.

One of the most fertile grounds for disagreement between database professionals is the appropriate usage of views. Some analysts promote the liberal creation and usage of views, whereas others preach a more conservative approach. When properly implemented and managed, views can be fantastic tools that help to ease data access and simplify development. Although views are simple to create and implement, few organizations take a systematic and logical approach to view creation. And therein lies the controversy. A strategic and reasonable policy guiding the creation and maintenance of views is required to avoid a muddled and confused mish-mash of view usage. Basically, views are very useful when implemented wisely, but can be an administrative burden if implemented without planning.

Data growth is driving the use of virtualization within data centers. The virtualization evolution from server to storage to desktop is catching on at many small-to-medium size businesses, as well as at large enterprises. Aimed at providing a better end-user and administrator experience than their physical counterparts, virtualized desktops promise lower cost of acquisition and management with a highly scalable, easy-to-deploy and fully protected environment. However, with virtualization desktop infrastructure (VDI) comes a set of new challenges. Chief among these are storage and server resource allocation and data protection and recovery.

A replay of a live DBTA webcast on overcoming gaps in database patch deployment is available on-demand on the DBTA website. Presented by former Citicorp CISO Mike Stiglianese and Sentrigo vice president of marketing Andy Feit, and hosted by Tom Wilson, president of DBTA and Unisphere Research, the webcast covered why organizations find it so difficult to patch databases in a timely manner, often delaying patch deployment by weeks, months and even years; the risks to data security that delays create; best practices for patch deployment; and why the use of virtual patching offers a compelling case for database security. Ironically, said Stiglianese during his presentation, the risk to organizations is the greatest right after a patch is announced up to the time that patch is implemented because once the new vulnerability becomes widely known, hackers begin actively working on how to exploit it.

ISUG, the leading users group of Sybase database professionals, has kicked off a new survey regarding management of security risks within database environments. The results of the study will help ISUG better serve its members, and gain insights into the upgrade challenges encountered at Sybase sites.

Sentrigo, Inc., a provider of database security and data protection solutions for the data center and the cloud, has released version 4.1 of its Hedgehog Enterprise database security suite, a fully integrated database activity monitoring and vulnerability assessment solution for enterprise organizations.

A replay of a live DBTA webcast on overcoming gaps in database patch deployment is available on-demand on the DBTA website. Presented last week by former Citicorp CISO Mike Stiglianese and Sentrigo vice president of marketing Andy Feit, and hosted by Tom Wilson, president of DBTA and Unisphere Research, the webcast covered why organizations find it so difficult to patch databases in a timely manner, often delaying patch deployment by weeks, months and even years; the risks to data security that delays create; best practices for patch deployment; and why vthe use of irtual patching offers a compelling case for database security.

Quest Software has announced the addition of a wizard-based workload replay feature to its database performance testing tool, Benchmark Factory for Databases, enabling users to easily and cost-effectively capture production workload and replay it in a testing environment. "It is a solution that is really made very easy for the user so they can use it at any point in the process but ideally we would see it used before changes are deployed out to production so they can get an idea of what the effect of those changes will be," Joe Faherty, product manager, Quest Software, tells 5 Minute Briefing.

EnterpriseDB, the largest independent PostgreSQL open source database company, has announced the availability of three components, adding security and replication technology for community PostgreSQL Server users - SQL/Protect, PL/Secure and xDB Replication Server. The add-on modules, now available with a subscription to Postgres Plus Standard Server, make PostgreSQL more secure and supply data integration capabilities between multiple PostgreSQL servers as well as between PostgreSQL and Oracle.

Application Security, Inc., a provider of database security, risk and compliance solutions, and NEON Enterprise Software, a provider of mainframe solutions, have announced a strategic alliance to deliver enterprise security solutions for monitoring database activity on the mainframe. The "compliance tidal wave" that has been hitting IT is now crashing on the mainframe, Josh Shaul, vice president product management, AppSec, tells 5 Minute Briefing. As open systems have succeeded in becoming "much more locked down," regulators are naturally expanding the breadth of their audits to include mainframes to ensure that proper controls are there as well, he explains. And while it is very hard to hack into mainframe systems, Shaul notes, for authorized users the potential for abuse exists on the mainframe in the same way as it does in distributed systems.

Symantec Corp. has introduced two new appliances designed to provide customers with a more flexible delivery model for its data protection, storage management and security solutions. The Symantec FileStore N8300 is a scale-out, clustered network attached storage (NAS) appliance designed to help customers address the business challenges associated with building out cloud storage, managing large volumes of data and controlling the associated storage costs. The NetBackup 5200 appliance series helps customers expand their data protection infrastructure with an all-in-one hardware and software backup solution that integrates deduplication to reduce storage.

3X Systems has released version 3.0 of its 500 and Tera Series remote backup appliances, capable of automatically backing up Microsoft Windows-based servers, workstations, and laptops over the internet to a central storage device that delivers data protection and disaster recovery capabilities. The new features in version 3.0 of the appliances provide more flexibility for users, Alan Arman, CEO, 3X, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "You utilize one console to back up your servers, your virtual environment, your laptops in the field, and back up remote offices, all managed under a policy-based back up. That saves administrators quite a bit of time."

MicroStrategy Inc., a provider of business intelligence software, says that in benchmark tests of its latest software release, MicroStrategy 9.0.2, the software can support more than 100,000 active users while delivering average response times under two seconds. MicroStrategy's high performance and scalability tests consisted of a four-node clustered configuration of MicroStrategy Intelligence Server containing a total of 32 CPU cores, running on commodity Intel-based hardware with the Red Hat Linux ES operating system. A query volume of 560,000 round-trip queries per hour was sustained while supporting over 100,000 active users, which can be extrapolated to a total user population of 500,000 people, the vendor says.