Securing the enterprise SAN with IBM Fibre Channel Endpoint Security

Abstract

Controlling access to and privacy of data within the enterprise can prove to be a formidable task with increased complexity and management overhead encountered as the granularity of access control is increased. Fibre Channel is the premier enterprise storage transport, so an organization's most sensitive data flows over Fibre Channel links within and across datacenters. In this article, we discuss a new, easy way to deploy innovation for Fibre Channel connections that ensures data is exchanged only between trusted servers and storage controllers, while also enabling the integrity and confidentiality of the data in flight between the trusted entities. We explain how the components of IBM Fibre Channel Endpoint Security are configured to work together to provide protection from insider threats, requiring minimal steps to deploy, fully controlled via policy, and transparent to applications, middleware, and operating systems.