Mario returns next week; check out these classic columns to make sure you're all caught up Mario Apicella is on vacation this week, so in his absence we present two classic Storage Insider columns for your reading pleasure. Also, check out The Storage Network Weblog for the latest updates. New Storage Insider columns will return on July 21.Moving ahead with data securityJune 23, 2005: How does your company enforce data security? I bet most of your answers will involve procedures based on host applications that have varying degrees of sophistication, depending on how much is at stake with a security breach. A different question, “Does your company have independent, storage-based data protection measures?” will probably just trigger blank stares, because data protection is mostly entrusted to host-residing applications and, at the moment, there are very few alternatives to that approach.Host-based data-protection works well (and has for many years) in cohesive environments where servers or mainframes never release their grip on data. Unfortunately, with the growing use of networked storage, cohesive environments are becoming less and less common…Read the rest at /article/05/06/23/26OPstorinside_1.html SNIA pushes for storage interoperabilityApril 07, 2005: As storage and computing professionals, we know all too well that moving disk drives between different RAID controllers is a royal pain in the neck — if we want to preserve our data, that is.One of the great ironies in storage is that even though disk drives and RAID controllers follow strict interoperability standards, there’s no standard dictating a common data format. Move the disks away from that specific (or similar) RAID card, and your files become unreadable. The reason why is just as frustrating: Vendors have no incentive to ship and no interest in shipping interoperable RAID solutions, so they build custom controller logic, which makes the controller’s data content meaningful only in that context…Read the rest at /article/05/04/07/15OPstorinside_1.html