FULTON, Maryland, July 25, 2017 — Today, RackTop Systems announced the immediate availability of its advanced secure encryption service with support for external cryptographic key management powered by Fornetix® Key Orchestration™. The enhancement enables organizations to meet strict data-at-rest encryption requirements while providing effortless, unified management of encryption keys. RackTop's advanced encryption service maintains the highest level of protection by eliminating any human interaction or knowledge of keys, pins, or passwords.

Over the past several weeks we’ve seen three newsworthy stories where sensitive information finds its way onto Amazon's S3 cloud storage service: NGA, WWE, and Verizon.

I recently had the chance to respond to a LinkedIn post from Larry Cole about terminology for Cyber Security vs Cyber Defense. The conversation with Larry really hits home regarding what we are all doing with technology and services: defending what we consider valuable. I think we have all been wrong in calling it Cyber Security. It’s time to start saying Cyber Defense and act accordingly.

What is interoperability and how did it get started? The idea of interoperability was born in the world of manufacturing. If you think back to before the industrial revolution, machines and inventions were created as one-off systems.

A Republican National Committee data analytics firm, Deep Root Analytics, disclosed that as many as 198 million U.S. citizens’ names, dates of birth, home addresses, phone numbers, and other identifiable information were exposed to the internet due to a database misconfiguration. Many firms are hastily moving to the cloud without fully understanding the security implications of doing so. By rolling new cloud implementations, data collection and analysis problems become simpler tasks. However, without a proper security framework around it, data is accessible to the internet and more likely to be retrieved.

Perry Holdsworth, our Sales & Marketing intern at Fornetix, gives us a primer on the recent WannaCry ransomware attack that has wreaked havoc on global networks.

Fornetix® today announced it has joined the VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program as an Elite level partner. Members of the TAP program collaborate with VMware to deliver innovative solutions for virtualization and cloud computing. The diversity and depth of the TAP ecosystem provides customers with the flexibility to choose a partner with the right expertise to satisfy their unique needs.

The need for Key Management beyond storage is effectively the need to provide security controls that reduce risk when authority is separated from responsibility. The published leak of National Geospatial Agency data onto Amazon S3 by a defense contractor shines a spotlight on both the problem and the solution.

Last week I spent my time attending the International Cryptographic Module Conference outside of Washington D.C. A recurring topic of interest to those in attendance was FIPS 140-2. There were a lot of questions around the topic, so I thought it beneficial to explain the basics of FIPS 140-2 certifications.