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Key Management FAQ

June 18, 2020June 18, 2020 J Metz 1 Comment

Key management focuses on protecting cryptographic keys from threats and ensuring keys are available when needed. And it’s no small task. That why the SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) invited key management and encryption expert, Judy Furlong, to present a “Key Management 101” session as part our Storage Networking Security Webcast Series. If you missed the live webcast, I encourage you to watch it on-demand as it was highly-rated by attendees. Judy answered many key management questions during the live event, here are answers to those, as well as the ones we did not have time to get to.

Q. How are the keys kept safe in local cache?

The Latest on NVMe-oF 1.1

June 9, 2020June 9, 2020 Tim Lustig Leave a comment

Since its introduction, NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF™) has not been resting on any laurels. Work has been ongoing, and several updates are worth mentioning. And that’s exactly what the SNIA Networking Storage Forum will be doing on June 30^th, 2020 at our live webcast, Notable Updates in NVMe-oF 1.1.

There is more to a technology than its core standard, of course, and many different groups have been hard at work at improving upon, and fleshing out, many of the capabilities related to NVMe-oF. In this webcast, we will explore a few of these projects and how they relate to implementing the technology. In particular, this webcast will be covering:

A summary of new items introduced in NVMe-oF 1.1
Updates regarding enhancements to FC-NVMe-2
How SNIA’s provisioning model helps NVMe-oF Ethernet Bunch of Flash (EBOF) devices
Managing and provisioning NVMe-oF devices with SNIA Swordfish

Encryption Q&A

May 27, 2020May 27, 2020 Alex McDonald Leave a comment

Ever wonder how encryption actually works? Experts, Ed Pullin and Judy Furlong, provided an encryption primer to hundreds of attendees at our SNIA NSF webcast Storage Networking Security: Encryption 101. If you missed it, It’s now available on-demand. We promised during the live event to post answers to the questions we received. Here they are:

Q. When using asymmetric keys, how often do the keys need to be changed?

A. How often asymmetric (and symmetric) keys need to be changed is driven by the purpose the keys are used for, the security policies of the organization/environment in which they are used and the length of the key material. For example, the CA/Browser Forum has a policy that certificates used for TLS (secure communications) have a validity of no more than two years.

Key Management 101

May 12, 2020May 12, 2020 J Metz Leave a comment

There’s a lot that goes into effective key management. In order to properly use cryptography to protect information, one has to ensure that the associated cryptographic keys themselves are also protected. Careful attention must be paid to how cryptographic keys are generated, distributed, used, stored, replaced and destroyed in order to ensure that the security of cryptographic implementations is not compromised.

It’s the next topic the SNIA Networking Storage Forum is going to cover in our Storage Networking Security Webcast Series. Join us on June 10, 2020 for Key Management 101 where security expert and Dell Technologies distinguished engineer, Judith Furlong, will introduce the fundamentals of cryptographic key management.

Key (see what I did there?) topics will include:

An FAQ on QUIC

April 27, 2020April 27, 2020 Tim Lustig 2 Comments

The SNIA Networking Storage Forum‘s recent live webcast “QUIC – Will It Replace TCP/IP” was a fascinating presentation that was both highly-rated and well-attended. Lars Eggert, technical director of networking at NetApp and current chair of the IETF working group that is delivering this new Internet protocol, explained the history of the protocol, how it is being adopted today, and what the future of QUIC deployment is likely to be. The session generated numerous questions. Here are answers to both the ones Lars had time to answer during the live event as well as those we didn’t get to.

Q. Is QUIC appropriate/targeted to non-HTTP uses like NFS, SMB, ISCSI, etc.?

Encryption 101: Keeping Secrets Secret

April 20, 2020April 20, 2020 Alex McDonald Leave a comment

Encryption has been used through the ages to protect information, authenticate messages, communicate secretly in the open, and even to check that messages were properly transmitted and received without having been tampered with. Now, it’s our first go-to tool for making sure that data simply isn’t readable, hearable or viewable by enemy agents, smart surveillance software or other malign actors.

But how does encryption actually work, and how is it managed? How do we ensure security and protection of our data, when all we can keep as secret are the keys to unlock it? How do we protect those keys; i.e., “Who will guard the guards themselves?”

25 Questions (and Answers) on Ethernet-attached SSDs

April 14, 2020September 30, 2022 Ted Vojnovich Leave a comment

The SNIA Networking Storage Forum celebrated St. Patrick’s Day by hosting a live webcast, Ethernet-attached SSDs – Brilliant Idea or Storage Silliness?” Even though we didn’t serve green beer during the event, the response was impressive with hundreds of live attendees who asked many great questions – 25 to be exact. Our expert presenters have answered them all here:

Q. Has a prototype drive been built today that includes the Ethernet controller inside the NVMe SSD?

Object Storage Questions: Asked and Answered

March 20, 2020March 29, 2020 John Kim Leave a comment

Last month, the SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) hosted a live webcast, “Object Storage: What, How and Why.” As the title suggests, our NSF members and invited guest experts delivered foundational knowledge on object storage, explaining how object storage works, use cases, and standards. They even shared a little history on how object storage originated. If you missed the live event, you can watch the on-demand webcast or find it on our SNIAVideo YouTube Channel.

We received some great questions from our live audience. As promised, here are the answers to them all.

Storage Networking Security Series: Protecting Data at Rest

March 13, 2020March 29, 2020 Steve Vanderlinden Leave a comment

Contrary to popular belief, securing “data at rest” does not simply mean encrypting the data prior to storage. While it is true that data encryption plays a major role in securing “data at rest,” there are several other factors that come into play and are as important as encryption. It’s the next topic the SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) will cover in our Storage Networking Security Series.

The Potential Impact of QUIC – Will it Replace TCP/IP?

March 3, 2020March 29, 2020 Tim Lustig 2 Comments

Have you heard about QUIC? Although initially proposed as the acronym for “Quick UDP Internet Connections,” IETF’s use of the word QUIC is not an acronym; it is merely the name of the protocol. QUIC is a new UDP-based transport protocol for the Internet, and specifically, the web. Originally designed and deployed by Google, it already makes up 35% of Google’s egress traffic, which corresponds to about 7% of all Internet traffic. Due to its ability to improve connection-oriented web application performance, it is gaining enthusiastic interest by many other large Internet players in the ongoing IETF standardization process, which is likely to lead to an even greater deployment.