HighCloud Simplifies Secure Data Migration and Backup to Public Cloud

HighCloud Security, Inc., in cloud encryption and key management software, announced capabilities that enable enterprises to securely migrate data to and from the public cloud.

This technology also lets customers leverage public cloud IaaS in new ways, including secure cloud backup and DR for VMs.

IaaS offerings are built on virtualized server infrastructures, creating security challenges. VMs are highly dynamic, and can be moved, replicated or suspended by a service provider typically without the knowledge of the data owner. As cloud adoption grows, organizations struggle to ensure the privacy of sensitive or regulated data while it is in flight to the cloud, as well as at rest.

In its latest release, HighCloud has added functionality to its existing encryption and key management software that allow organizations to define a secure hybrid cloud. Administrators now have the ability to migrate devices between VMs, regardless of whether those VMs are in a private cloud, or in a public cloud like Amazon AWS or S3. This allows encryption to be applied to VM data before it ever leaves a company’s perimeter for the cloud, ensuring protection of data in transition and at rest.

“As organizations continue to adopt the cloud for mission critical applications, security and data privacy become even more important,” said Richard Stiennon, chief research analyst, IT-Harvesthttp://it-harvest.com/. “HighCloud Security offers a compelling and flexible approach to encryption and key management that is optimized for the cloud. In this latest update, HighCloud adds important capabilities for customers who need to migrate data securely to, from and between cloud environments.”

“As cloud service providers become a target for data access, both to thieves and the U.S. government, organizations must take further steps to secure their data in the cloud,” said Steve Pate, co-founder and CTO, HighCloud. “At HighCloud, our goal is to give organizations an easy, powerful way to lock down their data throughout its lifecycle, and as they transition from private, to hybrid, to public clouds.”

Use Cases include:

• Secure DR: A company can create mirrored drives in the cloud, and the encryption will travel with the drive. In the event that the primary drive is inaccessible, IT can route access to the cloud-based drive. HighCloud Key Management ensures the correct keys are delivered automatically when accessed by an authorized application.
• Secure VM Backup: Organizations that want to leverage Amazon S3 storage can create VMs in their datacenter, using HighCloud to encrypt the data in those VMs before it is uploaded to S3 buckets. Data can be restored to existing VMs, or to new VMs, either on premise or in Amazon Web Services, as long as they are authenticated by HighCloud’s Key and Policy Server.
• Secure Shared Storage: Organizations that run clustered servers to ensure HA for mission critical applications can leverage HighCloud to encrypt the data in shared networked storage environments like Windows Failover Cluster. HighCloud Key and Policy Server handles failover and fail-back, ensuring encryption keys are available as needed.