We were at a recent vendor conference where Steve Foskett (@SFoskett) introduced us to Eric Bednash (@ericbednash), CEO & Co-Founder, RackTop Systems. They have taken ZFS and made it run as a ultra-secure NAS system. Matt Leib, my co-host for this episode, has on-the-job experience with ZFS and was a great co-host for this episode.
It turns out that Eric and his CTO (perhaps other RackTop employees) have extensive experience with intelligence and other government agencies that depend on data security. These agencies deal with cyber security threats an order of magnitude larger, than what corporations see .
All that time in intelligence gave Eric a unique perspective on what it takes to build secure, bullet proof NAS systems. Nine years or so ago, he and his CTO, took OpenZFS (and OpenSolaris) and used it as the foundation for their new highly available and ultra-secure NAS system.
Most storage systems support user access data protection based on authorization. If a user is authorized to see/write data, they have unrestricted access to the data. Perhaps if an organization is paranoid, they might also use data at rest encryption. But RackTop takes all this to a whole other level.
Data security to the Nth degree
RackTop offers dual encryption for data at rest. Most organizations would say single encryption’s enough. The data’s encrypted, how will another level of encryption make it more secure.
It all depends on how one secures keys (and just my thoughts here, maybe how easily quantum computing can decrypt singly encrypted data). So RackTop systems uses self encrypting drives (1st level of encryption) as well as software encryption (2nd level of encryption). Each having their own unique keys RackTop can maintain either in their own system or in a KMIP service provided by the data center.
They also supply user profiling. User data access can be profiled with a dataset heat map and other statistical/logging information. When users go outside their usual access profiles, it may signal a security breach. At the moment, when this happens RackTop notifies security administrators, but Eric mentioned a future release will have the option to automatically shut that user down.
And with all the focus on GDPR and similar regulations coming to a state near you, having user access profiles and access logs can easily satisfy any regulatory auditing requirements.
Eric said that any effective security has to be multi-layered. With RackTop, their multi-layer approach goes way beyond just data-at-rest encryption and user access authentication. RackTop also offers their appliance hardware sourced from secure supply chains and manufactured inside secured facilities. They have also modified OpenSolaris to be more secure and hardened it and its OS against cyber threat.
RackTop even supports cloud tiering with an internally developed secure data mover. Their data mover can securely migrate data (retaining meta-data on their system) to any S3 compatible object storage.
As proof of the security available from a RackTop NAS system, an unnamed US government agency had a “red-team” attack their storage. Although Eric shared only a few details on what the red-team attempted, he did say RackTop NAS survived the assualt without security breach.
He also mentioned that they are trying to create a Zero Trust storage environment. Zero Trust implies constant verification and authentication. Rather like going beyond one time entered login credentials and making users re-authenticate every time they access data. Eric didn’t say when, if ever they’d reach this level of security but it’s a clear indication of a direction for their products.
ZFS based NAS system
A RackTop NAS supplies a ZFS-based file system. As such, it inheritnall the features and advanced functionality of OpenZFS but within a more secured, hardened and highly available storage system
ZFS has historically had issues with usability and its multiplicity of tuning knobs. RackTop has worked hard to make ZFS easier to operate and removed much of the manual tuning required to make it perform well.
The podcast is a long and runs over ~44 minutes. We spent most of our time talking about security and less on the storage functionality of RackTop NAS. The security of RackTop systems takes some getting used to but the need exists today and not many storage systems are implementing security quite to their level. Much of what RackTop does to improve data security blew Matt and I away. Eric is a very smart security expert in addition to being a storage vendor CEO. Listen to the podcast to learn more.
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Eric Bednash, CEO & Co-founder, RackTop Systems
Eric Bednash is the co-founder and CEO of RackTop Systems, the pioneer of CyberConvergedTM data security, a new market that fuses data storage with advanced security and compliance into a single platform.
A serial entrepreneur and innovator, Bednash has more than 20 years of experience in solving the most complex and challenging data problems through designing products and solutions for the U.S. Intelligence Community and commercial enterprises.
Bednash co-founded RackTop in 2010 with partner and current CTO Jonathan Halstuch. Prior to co-founding RackTop, he served as co-founder and CTO of a mid-sized consulting firm, focused on developing mission data systems within the Department of Defense and U.S. intelligence communities.
Bednash started his professional career in data center systems at Time-Warner, and spent the better part of the dot-com boom in the Washington, D.C. area connecting businesses to the internet. His career path began while still in high school, where Bednash’s contracted with small businesses and individuals to write software and build computers.
Bednash attended Rochester Institute of Technology and Penn State University, and completed both undergrad and graduate coursework in Business and Technology Management at Stevenson University. A Forbes Technology Council member, he regularly hosts thought leadership & technology video blogs, and is a technology writer and speaker. He is a multi-instrument musician, recreational athlete and a die-hard Pittsburgh Steelers fan. He currently resides in Fulton, Md. with his wife Laura and two children