Sun Achieve Federal FIPS Certification at Security Level 2

Sun Microsystems, Inc. became the first and only tape drive vendor to be granted the FIPS 140-2 Certification at Security Level 2 for its Sun StorageTek T10000B tape drive.

Sun also announced that the KMS Agent API, published as an Open Source toolkit by the OpenSolaris community, has been adopted and is now supported by HP and IBM in their LTO tape drives, and by EMC in their RSA RKM enterprise key management system.

Sun extends its leadership in tape archive solutions for federal customers through the FIPS 140-2 Certification, which is a federal data security standard published and maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). All Federal agencies are required to use only FIPS-validated products in designing sensitive or valuable data processing systems. For enterprise, commercial and financial services end-users, the FIPS validation provides the assurance that Sun’s products meet the stringent security standards required for certification.

“The implementation of an encrypted system can mean the difference between the inconvenience of missing or damaged data and a full-blown business crisis that can threaten the very existence of the organization,” said Jon Benson, senior vice-president, Storage Group, Sun Microsystems, Inc. “With this FIPS certification, Sun becomes the world’s only vendor able to deliver a fully transparent and automated encryption solution to federal agencies, bringing an extra layer of security in safeguarding some of the world’s most sensitive data.”

Encryption has become a method of choice when it comes to protecting sensitive and valuable customer data such as names, addresses, credit card numbers and health records. Forty-five states in the United States have now passed laws that mandate disclosure should any unprotected personal data be exposed. Encryption provides a safety net and last line of defense when it comes to protecting confidentiality of trade secrets.