"With the compression of CryptoStor, what had been an hour-long backup process now takes about 35 minutes."

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With help from Thales, Lockheed Federal Credit Union safeguards data stored on tape and speeds the data backup process.

In more than 72 years of safeguarding deposits, Lockheed Federal Credit Union (LFCU) has not lost a penny of its members' money—or a byte of their financial data. The $3-billion, 100,000-member credit union supports its track record of reliability with Thales CryptoStor Tape. Since 2007, LFCU has used the Thales CryptoStor Tape appliance to encrypt the tapes it utilizes to back up customer data. Protecting backup tapes is important because credit union members rely on LFCU to safeguard their valuable information. Additionally, because the California-based credit union is subject to the state's strict data breach disclosure requirements, a loss of member data would be devastating to LFCU's public relations.

Explaining why LFCU chose to encrypt backup tapes with Thales CryptoStor Tape, Joe Gates, data processing manager for LFCU, says: "We would hear news stories about other companies that reported customer data loss due to a tape that was lost by a third-party vendor or the shipper. We didn't want to ever have to announce to the media that we have lost members' data. That's about the worst publicity a credit union could ever have."

The Case for Encryption

LFCU assessed its data security strategy and identified the tape data backup process as an area of potential weakness. Although LFCU had evaluated and trusted its backup media storage vendor, the reality is that once tapes were out of LFCU's possession, they were out of its control. The credit union needed more certainty that member data could not be compromised regardless of what happened to its backup tapes. Encryption with Thales CryptoStor Tape was the answer.

Thales CryptoStor Tape is a high-speed tape security appliance that compresses, encrypts, and cryptographically authenticates data as it is recorded to tape media or virtual tape without disrupting backup processes. Thales CryptoStor Tape dynamically encrypts and decrypts backup and restore communications between hosts and tape drives, centrally managing encryption keys for long-term security.

Choosing Thales CryptoStor Tape

A key differentiator of Thales CryptoStor Tape is its global encryption key management capabilities. Thales CryptoStor Tape incorporates a tiered strategy that provides central management of keys, including key management recovery of encrypted tape information, from tape appliances distributed across many locations. Thales CryptoStor Tape appliances also offer the strongest commercially available encryption algorithms and are certified as FIPS 140-2 level 3, one of the most stringent security benchmarks in the industry.

LFCU chose Thales CryptoStor Tape not only for its encryption capabilities, but also for its prebuilt integration with the Symitar™ Episys^® core processing solution that the credit union has used since 2003. For LFCU, Symitar's partnership with Thales meant that Thales CryptoStor Tape had been fully certified for use in the Episys environment and that Symitar supported the encryption solution.

Gates was impressed with how easily the system was installed. "Usually, with a new system installation, you're ready for a half dozen things to go wrong, but this device was really plug and play," Gates says. "Symitar installed CryptoStor in a matter of hours, and we were using it that night. It was just that easy, and we haven't had a single failure."

Increased Backup Speed

Deployed on the storage network between the servers and tape infrastructure, Thales CryptoStor Tape required no server, SAN, or tape upgrades and has had minimal operational impact at LFCU. A web-based user interface and access to Symitar training resources made the system easy for Gates and LFCU's data processing staff to learn and use. The solution has fully passed all LFCU's data restoration and disaster recovery tests. In fact, Gates reports that Thales CryptoStor Tape's data compression has helped speed the credit union's backup process.

"Part of our ongoing data backup strategy is to look for ways to keep our system offline time to a minimum," Gates explains. "With the compression of CryptoStor, what had been an hour-long backup process now takes about 35 minutes."

Benefits Lead to Additional Deployment

Given LFCU's success with its initial Thales CryptoStor Tape deployment, the credit union purchased two more encryption appliances in 2008, one for its recovery site and another for a planned server co-location site.

Today, if LFCU's data backup tapes are ever lost or stolen, member data is unreadable without the encryption keys stored in the Thales CryptoStor Tape appliances. Additionally, because they are encrypted—and thus unreadable to unauthorized users—lost data tapes would now be exempt from California's disclosure laws.

"With the compression of CryptoStor, what had been an hour-long backup process now takes about 35 minutes."
Joe Gates, Lockheed Federal Credit Union

Gates said that LFCU fully understands the value of Thales CryptoStor Tape. "It was important to put the CryptoStor system in place," he says. "From the standpoint of protecting our members' information, as well as the peace of mind it brings us, the system is well worth the investment."