Spare a thought for the compilers of dictionaries in the Digital Age. Technology is always moving beyond the confines of the alphabet.

From the health care industry to the financial industry, the influx of network security incidents has impacted any organization that employs the Internet to expedite business processes. As a result, anyone enlisting the services of these companies is susceptible to identity theft or fraud.

The specter of multimillion-dollar fines for regulatory noncompliance is a definite motivator when it comes to data retention. And there are equally drastic consequences, including negative impact on customer service, costs, productivity, and speed to market if data is inaccessible.

Storage Area Networks (SANs) have enormous potential to impact much more than storage management. SANs can and should serve as the infrastructure for utility-based processes for the entire IT organization.

Storage networks have become critical components of corporate computing environments. Regardless of the type of storage technology, these networks have been designed as if the storage environment and all of the components are already secure because security is provided by other networked systems.

Security threats have dramatically increased for Internet Protocol (IP) networks, applications, and the enterprises that rely on them. These threats come in many forms, from external and internal hackers, to viruses worms; and they threaten enterprises from beyond the perimeter, inside the firewall, and down to individual database files or communications.

The continuance of malicious computer attacks has made security a front page topic in almost every boardroom and IT oversight committee. Most IT departments accept that routine updates to software operating environments are a necessary part of managing systems.

Out of sight, out of mind. When storage systems are upgraded, retired due to proactive maintenance, reach the end of their lease, or are repurposed or resold, companies often delete the data from the disks and forget about it.

The ever-increasing size of applications and databases used to run today's enterprises drives the demand for faster systems. In many cases OLTP (online transaction processing), OLAP (online analytical processing), modeling, and heavy-duty video severing have become so mission critical that system performance directly impacts the bottom line.

New security threats are growing in frequency, sophistication, and danger. While perimeter-focused security can mitigate risk from known attacks, real protection comes from identifying and reacting to any new threat the instant it hits your network.

SANs, NAS, iSCSI, virtualization, in-band, out-of-band, the terminology seems never ending when it comes to storage and what's worse, no one will tell you what's best. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. The advent of SANs and the introduction of new technology has increased the number of options available, but there are no clear guidelines as to which one to use and when.

Evaluating the state of IT security and associated market statistics, it is apparent that traditional operating environments have not consistently provided acceptable levels of security to enterprise computing. Security-related exposures, liabilities, and losses are rapidly increasing, while conventional computing (hardware, system software, and network bandwidth) costs are all decreasing strongly year over year. Most of the operating environment vendors do not embrace a holistic approach to security - it is clearly an afterthought. There are major systemic flaws in their approach to security - and users are suffering the consequences every day.