SwapDrive's use of Decru's DataFort to encrypt stored data leads to new revenue sources.
SwapDrive, an ASP, is using a storage security appliance to protect data and to generate new business.
SwapDrive, a service provider that backs up data files for home offices and midsize businesses, was tired of being turned down by doctors offices and government agencies because it couldn’t meet their strict security requirements.
“In order to offer this service, security has to be our middle name,” says David Steinberg, CEO of the Washington, D.C., company.
Customers set up a time each day when their computers automatically upload all new files and changes to existing files to SwapDrive’s servers in California and Virginia. The service lets customers access files when they aren’t at their own computers and recover data that might be lost because of computer malfunctions. Customers sign up for the service mainly via their ISPs, which charge them depending on how much storage they want. For $8 per month, customers get 200M bytes of space.
SwapDrive has 150,000 customers and stores more than 20 terabytes of data, but found it didn’t have robust enough security to penetrate some potential customer segments. Steinberg figures that he’d locked up 99% of security problems, but that remaining 1% was a deal breaker for companies in industries with the most stringent security requirements.
SwapDrive had implemented dual firewalls with intrusion detection that it manages 24/7, encryption for data in transit and authentication that lets the customer control his password. But the one place SwapDrive’s system was vulnerable was data at rest.
SwapDrive’s storage drives are located in cages and protected by armed guards. Still, most companies know that the majority of hacker attacks come from within a company.
“Sometimes the savvier user would say, ‘But what about your employees,’ and I had to say, ‘Yeah, they could, but they won’t,'” Steinberg says. That response usually wasn’t enough assurance to convince those potential customers to go with SwapDrive.
Steinberg started to look around for solutions. His biggest requirement was that the product couldn’t slow down the back-up process. “One of our service features is that we’ll serve up customer storage practically as fast as you could get it from your disk drive,” he says. To keep that promise, SwapDrive wouldn’t settle for a solution that slowed down the service.
Then Steinberg discovered Decru. “What Decru did was lock up that last part of our Achilles’ heel,” he says.
Steinberg was impressed by Decru because it uses the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), the security standard approved for government agencies. “Now when a doctor’s office gives me hell, I can say, ‘Dude, the [National Security Agency] believes in it, don’t tell me you don’t,'” Steinberg says. Doctor’s offices must comply with a federal mandate requiring them to follow strict security guidelines for protecting patient information.
Decru’s DataFort product not only encrypts the data that sits on SwapDrive’s storage devices, but encrypts data as it is transferred from SwapDrive’s servers to the storage devices.
“What this says is the curious guy in [human resources] to the person who has more malicious intent wouldn’t be able to read data even if they’re inside the firewall,” Steinberg says.
SwapDrive considered other offerings based on Triple-DES, the previous standard adopted by the government, but when it learned that Decru had a product that uses AES security, the company decided to go with the most bulletproof system available.
SwapDrive also considered Vormetric, which has products that use AES, but Steinberg says he was concerned about throughput.
DataFort is a single box that took SwapDrive’s data center manager about a half hour to install. SwapDrive turned it on in November on a trial basis and launched it fully in January. The box cost SwapDrive around $35,000.
“Our guess is we’ve easily recovered the cost by the additional business our security has brought us,” Steinberg says. Since the implementation, SwapDrive has pursued government contracts and has several deals in the making, he says.
DataFort has changed significantly the way SwapDrive does business. “We’ve turned a technical thing into a huge marketing focus for the company,” Steinberg says.
SwapDrive is working on creating two classes of service so that customers who might have less-stringent security requirements could choose a lower cost service that doesn’t encrypt data at rest and other customers could pay a bit more for the total encryption service. “We think that having Decru in there is a value add that could be charged for,” he says.
In the meantime, SwapDrive likely will continue to add to the folder it keeps of the most interesting reasons why its customers are glad they back up their files. Steinberg’s favorite is the customer who spilled a banana soy shake on his laptop.
