To better understand how iTernity solves the challenges of compliant and future-proof archiving we want to define certain terms for you:
Acronym of Advanced Encryption Standard. AES is an encryption method established by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and is used worldwide to secure sensitive electronic data. A 256-bit encryption is considered one the most secure encryption methods.
In general terms, archiving can be defined as the storage of data for a certain period of time.
The term can be divided into three concepts: Electronic archiving is the database-protected, unchangeable, secure, long-term, and at the same time reproducible storage of data. Long-term archiving refers to the retention of data for periods of more than 10 years. With audit-proof archiving, business-relevant data must be protected against subsequent changes and manipulation. The guidelines are defined, for example, in the GoBD or GDPR.
The protection of data from undesired incidents which could endanger the integrity and availability of the data during the entire retention period is a fundamental part of archiving. The definition of this protection against unauthorized access, modification, deletion, manipulation, or data loss depends strongly on the respective industry and regulatory requirements (laws, internal guidelines, compliance principles).
Audit-proof archiving is not only about the pure storage or backup of data. Companies must meet a complex list of requirements which are defined by regulatory authorities, the legislator, or the companies themselves. This form of storage is crucial in order to be able to prove during inspections or audits that the required regulations are being observed.
Audit-proof data is data that is protected against revision or modification and cannot be manipulated. This term is often used in the context of legally compliant storage and archiving of electronic data.
Audit Trail/History is a requirement of numerous compliance regulations, in which companies have to document all activities of their archived data or records (e.g. accesses, changes), and to protect the documentation or the history from alteration, tampering or deletion. iCAS offers this audit trail/history capability to support companies in their compliance efforts.
In cloud storage implementations, iCAS backend can be a blob store. In this, the data is treated exclusively as Binary Large Objects (BLOBs) or binary data streams.
Content Storage Containers (CSCs) are part of iCAS 'patented technology to ensure data integrity. CSCs are containers that contain all the necessary information (user data, metadata, and various hash values) in closed archiving objects. The CSCs can be flexibly stored on all storage devices (SAN, NAS, DAS, backup tape) or on object or cloud storage without losing the integrity protection of the data.
The act of conforming with laws, policies, regulations, norms, requirements or standards. Nearly every organization in the world must comply with various laws and regulations that govern data retention and protection.
We define compliant archiving as
(1) the act of retaining particular data, information, or records for a specified period of time;
(2) and protecting it during the retention period from unwanted occurrences that can threaten the privacy, integrity and availability of the data (e.g. unauthorized access, modification, deletion, tampering, loss);
(3) to adhere with regulatory requirements that mandate the industry in which an organization is operating, and/or to comply with the organization’s internal data management policies.
More information on compliant archiving
During its long retention period, archived data must be available at all times and quickly retrievable in cases of an audit, eDiscovery, or business analytics, as well as to support business processes.
An incident, in which transmitted, stored, or processed protected data is accidentally or unlawfully accessed, altered, destroyed, deleted, or disclosed without authorization.
The consistency, accuracy, validity, and completeness of data must be guaranteed over its entire retention time. The data must be stored in non-rewritable and non-erasable format, and in tamper-proof manner.
A method of duplicating data from one location to another so that organizations always have a backup of their data. iCAS enables data replication, through which the original and the copy of the data are stored on separate storage systems.
The privacy of personally identifiable information (PII) and other sensitive data or records must be protected. This requirement can be found in many regulations such as in the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the United States Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and the United Kingdom Data Protection Act 1998.
A Document Management System (DMS) is a system used to track, manage and store documents digitally and reduce the use of paper. Most DMS are capable of keeping a record created in various versions and modified by different users. The term overlaps with the concept of content management system. It is often viewed as a component of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems.
Enterprise Content Management – short ECM – is a formalized way of organizing and storing various documents and contents of an organization which relate to its processes throughout the content’s lifecycle.
Enterprise Resource Planning - short ERP - is an integrated planning and controlling of core business resources, e.g. capital and personnel, in order to ensure more efficient value-added processes and more optimal controlling of business processes.
As all data storage media at some point in time will reach its End-of-life (EOL), crucial archived data must be able to be easily and securely migrated to new storage platforms in the future. As it is unclear how the standards of future storage platforms would be, companies should make their data management and archive future-proof by utilizing a software-defined archiving solution. More information
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a regulation which aims to protect persons living in the European Union with regard to the processing of their personal data. The regulation also rules the free movement of the EU residents' personal data outside the EU area. Organizations which process personal data of EU residents, regardless where they are located, must comply with this regulation. More information on the GDPR
GoBD ist a German law that regulates proper accounting and storage of tax-related electronic data and paper documents. It also rules electronic data access by the tax authorities in the context of external audits.
High availability describes a capability of an IT system to continue to operate with a high degree of probability (often 99,9% or more) despite a failure of one or more of its components. iCAS provides several high availability scenarios depending on certain requirements and architecture.
The HPE Complete program brings partnerships and investments of transformative innovations to customers, increasing the value of your HPE solutions. HPE Complete Assured testing validates reliability and interoperability of HPE Complete third-party products with HPE storage, server, and networking solutions. More information
Hierarchical storage management – short HSM - allows transferring of data to different storage media following predefined rules like the frequency of usage, file types or other criteria.
iTernity Compliant Archive Software (iCAS) is a leading software solution for the long-term archiving of important and critical enterprise data. iCAS archives business data in the form of audit-proof Content Storage Containers (CSCs), thereby enabling compliance with legal and internal data storage requirements. Further information about iCAS
A continuous monitoring and verifying the correctness, validity, and accuracy of archive data based on the hash values of the data. This integrity monitoring process is important in order to detect any kind of data inconsistency, e.g. Invalid data or silent data corruption. If iCAS detects data inconsistency, the Self-Healing feature automatically replaces the corrupted data with a valid copy from the synchronized storage
A company’s existing investment in IT infrastructures and personnel know-how can be protected through the implementation of a Software-Defined Archiving (SDA) solution. The open and flexible SDA solution integrates seamlessly into existing enterprise IT infrastructures and enables companies to build a central and future-proof archive storage platform that is independent from any hardware storage. No special skills are needed to implement Software-Defined Archiving.
When archiving with iCAS, data from business applications is written to the iCAS file share via the iCAS file system interface/gateway (iFSG). The software solution initially creates self-sustained archive objects (CSCs) which bundle the archive data with the corresponding metadata. Subsequently, these CSCs are stored in the storage hardware.
The first generation archive storage solution in year 2000. Jukeboxes, the popular name for magneto-optical storage systems, were the first solution for tamper-proof data storage. Due to its various limitations, most Jukeboxes had been taken out of the market since 2005. Read more about the replacement of outdated archive silos
Retention periods for data or records vary based on the type of data and the regulations that apply to a company or industry. Especially in highly regulated industries, in markets with high product liability requirements and in the public sector, companies need to keep their data for several years or even up to decades.
Background information about certain aspects of the data, such as time and date of creation, author, and data source. iTernity Compliant Archive Software (iCAS) retains user and metadata separately. No personal data is stored in metadata or combined with it. This procedure allows a targeted processing and handling of data in relation to data protection.
As a multi-tenant solution, iCAS is able to divide the archive storage per client to up to 128 different LUNs or archive paths. Thus, users can build extremely large archives. This way, the flexible architecture of the system enables an expansion of the archive memory during operation that is tailored to suit an organization's need or demand.
NAS is a dedicated storage device with a server within which connects to a computer network and provides file-based data storage services to multiple clients in the network. NAS enables multiple computers in the network to share the same storage space at once and to access the same files - easily and efficiently.
An object storage is a type of storage architecture or form of data storage that manages data as objects instead of as files or blocks. An object consists of data, metadata and a globally unique identifier. Object storage is used to efficiently store massive amounts of unstructured data (such as images, songs, videos) - without having to edit or modify it over a long period of time.
Acronym of Picture Archiving and Communication System. It is a technology used in medical to store, retrieve, analyze, share and digitally process medical images produced by various medical appliances, such as CT Scan, MRI and X-Ray. iCAS is certified for its seamless connection with many PACS applications and enables healthcare organizations to comply with various regulations that govern the industry.
PII is an acronym of personally identifiable information. It contains certain information that can identify a person, such as name, date of birth, gender, address or IP address. The term is commonly used in English speaking countries.
Protection of personally identifiable information or other sensitive information from unauthorized collection, access, storage, dissemination, use, destruction or deletion.
A managed directory for storing and describing digital objects for a (digital) archive.
The act of retaining critical business data (e.g. patient's data, financial transactions) for a certain period to comply with policies, laws, regulations or standards.
A dedicated high-speed network that connects servers physically via SAN switches to shared storage devices, such as disk arrays and tape libraries, by providing the servers with block-level access to the storage. SAN enables a functionally distributed storage across the organization, which makes storage performance faster. SAN also enables clustering of storage devices for better management and use of storage.
A regulation issued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission which outlines reporting requirements of records for brokers or dealers under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The requirements include data retention, indexing, integrity and accessibility.
Accidental change of bits on a storage medium without external influence, caused by e.g. media failure, chemical or electromagnetic processes. This can falsify protected data or make it unreadable. ICAS' self-healing feature counteracts this phenomenon by automatically replacing damaged data with the valid copy.
The use of a software-based technology in archiving business data. Software-Defined Archiving (SDA) enables flexibility and scalability in archiving, as well as eliminates archive silos – an obviously more effective and efficient approach to digital archiving than the hardware-based archive systems. Learn more about Software-Defined Archiving
TCO, stands for Total Cost of Ownership, is estimated direct and indirect costs of a product, which includes total costs in acquiring, operating/maintaining and replacing/upgrading the product. A TCO analysis provides a basis for assessing the total economic value or viability of an investment in a product - often in IT products such as software and hardware. Learn how iCAS can reduce your TCO in data storage here
A virtual server is a virtual machine used as server. In comparison with a physical or dedicated server, a virtual server is lower in costs, easier to manage, more scalable and flexible. A main advantage of iTernity Compliant Archive Software (iCAS) is that the solution can completely run on a virtual machine. Thus, users can profit from all the advantages of virtual servers without having to reduce security standards for long-term protection of their application data.
With iCAS’ WORM technology, once data is archived in the CSCs, it can never be modified and deleted before the specified retention period expires. This technology protects the CSCs, thus also protects its data, from manipulation and unauthorized deletion.
Would you like to learn more about our solutions and Software-Defined Archiving? Tell us about your challenges, request more information or arrange a free demo with our experts!