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."
Vormetric provides centralized data security governance in one system that can protect structured and unstructured data in data centers, geographically distributed environments, private clouds, public clouds and hybrid clouds. When data moves from a data center or private cloud to an Amazon public cloud, Vormetric encryption and access control policies can automatically follow it for continuous protection and regulatory compliance.
To eliminate barriers associated with governing data security in the cloud, Vormetric Data Security for Amazon provides transparent file-based encryption and access control for structured and unstructured data in Amazon EC2. In an approach that requires no integration, Vormetric enables IT departments to create protected Amazon Machine Instances on the fly via the Vormetric Data Security Manager. This FIPS validated, secure appliance provides remote centralized management for encryption keys, access control rules, and audit policies.
Unlike volume-level encryption solutions that only provide access control to the server, Vormetric operates at the file level so it can granularly enforce encryption and access control policies and audit usage at the server, process and user layers. "This offering is unique. There are other encryption solutions out there for the cloud but most of them are volume-based so the point of security is to the actual Amazon machine instance, or the operating environment that you have in the Amazon cloud." Because Vormetric operates at the file level, says Hellman, "You are getting much stronger security because you are transferring that access control and that security point to the actual request for the data, rather than just the Amazon machine instance."
For organizations that want to deploy Amazon EC2 in a hybrid model to provision additional processing and storage resources from the public cloud when they are needed, Vormetric encryption and access control policies can automatically follow data. This capability eliminates redundant policy stores for on-premise/private cloud and public cloud infrastructures, while ensuring consistent enforcement of security standards where ever the data resides.
Vormetric allows organizations to centrally manage encryption keys, policies and audit logs for all environments, including virtual and hardware servers, through a single console. Vormetric Data Security for Amazon also leverages Vormetric's strong separation of duties model to ensure that encryption keys are handled securely and that data is only accessed by authorized processes or individuals. This includes the ability to encrypt files while leaving their metadata in the clear so that IT administrators can perform their jobs without directly accessing the protected information.
For more information, go to www.vormetric.com.