The Tech Report reviews the Kanguru eFlash - eSATA Flash Drive and discusses the state of the industry regarding USB3.0 and eSATA adoption.

So what about external Serial ATA? eSATA ports have slowly become common on even mid-range motherboards, and they’ve even popped up in a few laptops. The interface is plenty quick, too, offering transfer rates up to 300MB/s. But eSATA is just a data pipe, so it can’t provide connected drives with power. That has to come from an external source, which has typically involved bulky power adapters for eSATA enclosures that plug into wall sockets. Auxiliary cables are cumbersome at best, and they’re certainly not appropriate for pocket-sized flash drives.

Fortunately, a better solution exists. A hybrid eSATA/USB connector has been developed that elegantly melds USB and external Serial ATA plugs.

The eFlash once again scored highly on speed benchmarks and the PCI adaptor kit was noted as a “perfect addition” to the package.

Data Backup, Portable Storage

Due to popular demand, the Kanguru Hard Drive Duplicator now features full support for Solid State Drives.  SSD’s, which are rapidly replacing standard hard drives in laptops and netbooks, can be imaged, resized and sanitized using the HDD Duplicator.

Typical applications include:

• Deploying new laptops with a standard image of Operating System and Applications
• Upgrading an older drive to a new larger drive without partitioning
• Creating a full system back-up to use in the event of a hard drive crash
• Securely wiping all data before re-using or disposing

Adaptors for mini-SATA and micro-SATA connections are available.

Duplication

GovInfoSecurity.com has a timeline of data breaches affecting US Financial Institutions in 2009.  “Stolen or Missing Hardware” was cited in a number of the incidents, along with “Insider Theft”.

These data breaches could lead to penalties under a number of state laws.  The FTC could also impose fines under the Gramm Leach Bliley Act (GLBA), which requires financial institutions to protect consumer data.

Data Security, Financial

A study in the UK reveals that most executives are unaware of security threats and only 37% of businesses had an accurate inventory of where their data was stored.

Nearly half of UK executives don’t know how many security incidents their business has had to cope with in the last year, according to research.

PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Global State of Information Security Survey, which questioned more than 7,000 business leaders, showed that 49 per cent of UK execs were unaware of incidents.

Getting a handle on data storage should be one of the first steps in securing a business.

Data Security

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Uncategorized

Pitt County Memorial hospital is paying credit monitoring after an employee lost a thumbdrive containing names and social security numbers.

From The Greenville Daily Reflector:

PCMH sent letters to the affected patients, offering one year of free credit monitoring and identity theft services through Debix Inc. It will include credit monitoring and insurance protection to any patient who becomes a victim of identity theft as a result of the incident.

The article does not mention what the total cost of the breach will be, but you can get an estimate here.  There is also no mention of whether the device contained any protected health information (PHI) that would be covered by HIPAA.  New disclosure laws recently took affect as part of the HITECH Act of 2009.  If encryption is implemented on the storage device, notification is not required.

Data Security, Healthcare

Dr. John Halamka, CIO of CareGroup Health System, shares his privacy and security lessons learned.  Dr. Halamka serves as Vice-Chairman of the federal Health Information Technology Standards Committee.

The workgroup’s recommendations include:

All data at rest on mobile devices must be encrypted. Encrypting all databases and storage systems within an organization’s data center would create a burden. But ensuring that devices such as laptops and USB drives, which can be stolen, encrypt patient-identified data makes sense and is part of new regulations such as Massachusetts’ data protection law.

See the full article for Dr. Halamka’s top five security lessons.

Data Security, Healthcare, Portable Storage

At The CTO Forum, Vishal Dhupar of Symantec discusses strategies for securing data at rest.  One of the key points is that data throughout the organization should be classified based on risk and protected accordingly.  Things to consider include regulations, industry standards, business risk, and intellectual property protection requirements.

Regulatory compliance requirements and the threat of having to publicly disclose data breaches have a growing number of IT executives taking a serious look at their security strategies even at the storage level. After all, data loss is big news and it can quickly undermine customer confidence, jeopardize company brand and reputation, and result in significant financial losses. Data privacy has become a critical issue across the world.

Data Security