Townsend Security Data Privacy Blog

Why is Encryption & Key Management So Important?

Posted by Michelle Larson on Nov 20, 2014 12:50:00 PM

Shayna at SecureWorld Seattle 2014

More Questions from the Tradeshow Floor (Part 2)

In our last blog we touched on a few of the questions asked at events we attended in November.  There were so many great conversations that I’ve decided to share a few more!Session on encryption and key management

With the various platforms that I can deploy an encryption key manager in, how do I know which one is right for me?

There are several factors that will come in to play when deciding where you deploy your key management:

  • Compliance regulations that you need to meet can be a factor in whether you deploy an Hardware Security Module (HSM) or a cloud HSM or a virtualized instance. If you are working with an auditor or going through a QSA audit, you'll want to have a conversation with them to understand their expectation from a compliance point of view around where you deploy your encryption key manager.
  • Risk tolerance will also come into play. You may have a security group within your organization with strong feelings about how to deploy encryption key management and how to mitigate risk. If you have large amounts of sensitive data to protect you might decide to deploy an HSM in your secure data center. If you're dealing with a very small amount of data and you do not process credit cards or personally identifiable information, your risk assessment may indicate a cloud deployment.
  • Budget is certainly always a factor to consider. It is important to consider the cost benefits of security however, we all understand that leaving our data in the clear is no longer an option. It is a matter of understanding your industry regulations and risk assessment, then deciding what encryption and key management to deploy.

While they are generally the most secure solution, Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) can be more expensive than a virtual environment, dedicated cloud instance, or virtual private cloud. Once you look at all the factors that affect your company, we will be there with the right solution that will work for your needs.

Tell me more about all these different options you have for the Alliance Key Management Solution… are they all going to help me meet compliance requirements?

There are still our original hardware security modules (HSMs) and now there are new options for deployment of cloud-based HSMs, virtual appliances (VMware), and true cloud instances of encryption and key management in AWS and Microsoft Azure.

  • Hardware Security Module (HSM) is a physical appliance or security device that is protected and tamper evident. Built for high resiliency and redundancy it has hot swappable rated disc drives, dual power supplies, dual network interfaces, and is deployed in your IT data center.
  • Cloud HSM is a physical appliance hosted in a secure cloud with real-time encryption key and access policy mirroring.  Dedicated HSMs are hosted in geographically dispersed data centers under an ITIL-based control environment and are independently validated for compliance against PCI DSS and SOC frameworks. No access is available to the cloud vendor or any unauthorized user.
  • Virtual Appliances are the exact same key management solution - the same binary software that runs inside the hardware HSM - available as a VMware instance.
  • In the Cloud - If you're running on Microsoft Windows Azure, vCloud, or in Amazon Web Services (AWS),the encryption key manager can run as a true cloud instance in a standard cloud or deploy in a virtual private cloud for added data protection for sensitive applications.

Because encryption and key management is so important, we offer all of the options listed above as NIST and FIPS 140-2 compliant solutions.

How is Alliance Key Manager Priced?

We have a wide set of options for our customers, and are dedicated to helping find affordable solutions. We have perpetual license or subscription options for classic HSMs, Cloud HSM, and virtualized environments. Our cloud offerings are true usage-based subscriptions, so if you're used to deploying in Amazon Web Services or Windows Azure, our encryption & key management solutions will fit that same strategy for pricing.  

We really believe that the encryption should go everywhere you need it to go! Your key management should work across a wide set of application environments, and it must be affordable, so that we can all get where we need to be in terms of protecting sensitive data. Regardless of where your data is or what platform you are using, there's a key management solution that can work for you!

How can Encryption and Key Management improve my bottom line?

Whether you choose a designated hardware security module (HSM), something designed specifically for virtualized environments (VMware), or data storage in the cloud, encryption and key management solutions can help you:

  • Gain competitive advantage and build loyalty by protecting your customers data against access by unauthorized users
  • Reduce hardware costs by leveraging virtual environments in the cloud
  • Significantly improve your data security strategy while satisfying data compliance and privacy requirements

Overall, data encryption offers many benefits and provides solid protection against potential threats or theft. In addition to the many benefits, encryption is also efficient, easy to use, and affordable!

What sets Townsend Security apart from other key management vendors?

We want to protect data and make sure encryption is available everywhere you need it, so at Townsend Security we have a very different philosophy and approach:

  • We think that when you buy an encryption key manager, you should be able to easily deploy the solution, get all your encryption projects done properly, and have very affordable and predictable costs.
  • We understand that we live in a world where budget matters to our customers, so we do not charge client-side fees.  
  • We know that IT resources are limited and have done a huge amount of work to make our solutions easy with out-of-the-box integrations, simplified deployments, and also provide along with our solution ready-made client-side applications, encryption libraries, source code samples, as well as SDKs for developers who need them to get their projects done very quickly.

Want to learn more about how to properly secure your data and protect your business against a data breach? Download our eBook “The Encryption Guide”:

The Encryption Guide eBook


Topics: Alliance Key Manager, Compliance, Data Security, Encryption, eBook, Encryption Key Management, Trade Shows

So, What is Encryption & Key Management Anyway?

Posted by Michelle Larson on Nov 18, 2014 12:38:00 PM

James and Shayna at PASS Summit 2014

Questions from the Tradeshow Floor  (Part 1)

November was a very busy month for tradeshows, conferences, and speaking engagements for the team at Townsend Security.  We love getting out to meet our current and potential customers and other than “giant Tetris”, our favorite things are the great questions we get asked at events. Giant Tetris at Re:Invent

What if I lose an encryption key?

While the fear of losing a key is legitimate, the keystone of a successful encryption solution is encryption key management, which is the primary solution for managing, storing, and most importantly, protecting encryption keys. Unlike a “key storage” solution, a cryptographic encryption key manager is typically a NIST FIPS 140-2 compliant hardware security module (HSM) or virtual machine in the cloud that manages key storage, creation, deletion, retrieval, rotation, and archival. Many key management solutions are also produced in pairs, with one located in a different geographical location for high availability. If doing encryption key management right, you will never lose an encryption key.

Is there more to encryption key management than just storing my encryption keys?

There is far more to encryption key management than just storing the encryption key somewhere. Generally, a key storage device only provides storage of the encryption key, and you need to create the key elsewhere. Also, just storing your encryption keys “somewhere” doesn’t work very well for compliance regulations. With an encryption key manager, there is a whole set of management capabilities and a suite of functions that provide dual control, creates separation of duties, implements two factor authentication, generates system logs, and performs audit activities, along with managing the key life cycle. Beyond storing the encryption key, a cryptographic key manager manages the entire key life cycle. Some of the most important functions the key management administrator performs are the actual creation and management of the encryption keys. The keys are generated and stored securely and then go through the full cycle to become active, go into use, expire, retire (post-activation), and then be backed up in escrow, and then deleted (the “destruction” phase).  There is a very real need, and very specific compliance regulations & guidelines that require you to store and manage your encryption keys away from the data that they protect.

How easy is securing and protecting sensitive data on SharePoint?

The path to implementing encryption and key management for SharePoint is one of the most straightforward and easy paths. Townsend Security’s Alliance Encryption Key Management solution fully supports automatic encryption in SQL Server and integrates with ease.  SQL Server Enterprise and higher editions (starting with 2008) fully implement extensible key management (EKM) and encryption to protect data. Installing encryption on that platform is the first step. Administrators can then leverage the automatic encryption capabilities of SQL Server with only a few commands and no application changes.

What impact does encryption have on SQL Server performance?

Encryption will always be a CPU intensive task and there will be some performance impact due to extra processing power needed for encryption and decryption. However, the Microsoft encryption libraries as well as the .NET environment are highly optimized for performance. We have always seen very good performance on SQL Server and the native encryption capabilities that it provides. Microsoft reports that Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) on SQL Server may cost you 2-4% penalty in performance, and our own tests show similar results that fall on the 2% end of things.

Is there any limit to the number of servers that I can hook up to your encryption key manager?

There are no restrictions, and no license constraints on our encryption & key management solution. We don't meter or count the number of client-side platforms that connect to our Alliance Key Manager, so you can hook up as many client side applications, servers, and processors as you need to. This is one of the things I think is different about how we approach encryption and key management with our customers. We also know the applications you are running today may not be the applications you need to be running tomorrow and we really want you to deploy encryption to all your sensitive data and scale up when & where you need it.

I am collecting data in Drupal. What data do I need to encrypt?

Organizations starting an encryption project always have this question on their minds. It is a simple question, but can be hard to answer. Generally speaking, you should encrypt any information that alone, or when combined with other information, can identify a unique, individual person. This is called Personally Identifying Information, or PII. This should be your starting point, but you may need to address other information depending on the compliance regulations you must meet.

  • PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) applies to anyone, public or private, who take credit cards for payment. Primary account numbers (PAN) are specifically addressed.
  • HIPAA/HITECH Act requires the medical segment (and any business associate) provide data protection for protected health information (PHI) of patients. 

  • GLBA/FFIEC applies to the financial industry (bank, credit union, trading organization, credit reporting agency) for protecting all sensitive consumer information. 

  • Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) applies to public traded companies for sensitive data of personally identifiable information (PII).


In addition to these compliance regulations, the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) has created the Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM) specifically designed to provide fundamental security principles to guide cloud vendors and to assist prospective cloud customers in assessing the overall security risk of a cloud provider.

We encourage all developers to check out Townsend Security’s Developer Program, it allows developers to design strong and secure applications from the ground up using NIST compliant AES encryption and FIPS 140-2 compliant encryption key management.

Developer Program Encryption


Topics: Alliance Key Manager, Data Security, Encryption, Developer Program, Encryption Key Management, Trade Shows

PASS Summit 2013 - We’ll Be There! Will You?

Posted by Liz Townsend on Oct 8, 2013 3:00:00 PM

Townsend Security, an industry leader in data security and encryption key management, will be exhibiting at the PASS Summit in Charlotte, North Carolina this year on October 15-18. We will feature our FIPS 140-2 compliant encryption key management hardware security module (HSM), along with our new hosting option for managing your encryption keys in the cloud.

Encryption-Key-Management-SQL-Server

Will you be attending PASS this year? The Professional Association of SQL Server (PASS) hosts this summit every year and is the largest conference for SQL users and professionals worldwide. Look for us in booth #322 to learn more about how easy encryption and encryption key management can be with your SQL Server. Whether you are using a legacy version of SQL Server or SQL Server 2012 with Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) and Extensible Key Management (EKM), Alliance Key Manager can manage your encryption keys.

How Alliance Key Manager for SQL Server protects your data:

  • Automation of all key management tasks including rotation, retrieval, and generation in a central location
  • Uses Microsoft’s Extensible Key Management (EKM) interface to support Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) on SQL Server 2008/2012
  • Works with all versions of SQL Server

Key Management Hosted in the Cloud
Townsend Security's new Alliance Key Manager Hosted HSM solution allows customers to own a dedicated key manager HSM in a hosted environment consisting. The solutions consists of a production and high availability (HA) HSM in geographically dispersed data centers under an ITIL-based control environment independently validated for compliance against PCI DSS and SOC frameworks. Unlike other hosted encryption key management offerings, only the customer has administrative and security access to the HSMs.

Encrypting Data in Microsoft SharePoint
Since Microsoft SharePoint runs on top of a SQL Server environment, protecting data in SharePoint is easier than ever. Many SQL administrators are fearful that their users are storing sensitive, unencrypted data in SharePoint, and they rightly should be. Alliance Key Manager for SQL Server can help to secure this data.

Encryption Key Management for SQL Server Enterprise Edition
Alliance Key Manager for SQL Server integrates seamlessly with TDE and EKM technologies to enable automatic encryption in SQL Server 2008/2012 Enterprise Edition and above. Additionally, Alliance Key Manager for SQL Server supports cell level encryption, which allows database administrators to select the columns they wish to encrypt in a database - a benefit for many administrators with larger databases.

Encryption Key Management for SQL Server 2005
Many SQL users are still running earlier editions of SQL Server that don’t support EKM & TDE. However, running older versions of SQL Server does not limit your ability to encrypt data and manage encryption keys! Townsend Security supports cell level encryption for SQL Server 2005.

Multi-Platform Environments
Alliance Key Manager isn’t exclusive to the Microsoft SQL suite. In fact, our key management server integrates easily into complex, multi platform environments with many types of databases, operating systems, and programming languages. Our encryption key manager can protect data on the IBM i (AS/400), DB2, Oracle, Linux, Windows, and in the cloud.

To learn more, download our white paper "Encryption Key Management for Microsoft SQL Server 2008/2012."

 

Click me

 

 

 

Topics: Microsoft, Encryption Key Management, White Paper, Trade Shows, SQL Server

Are You Gambling with $7.2 Million? Maybe.

Posted by Luke Probasco on Feb 21, 2012 9:00:00 AM

HIPAA HITECH GambleMany people we talk to are gambling with $7.2 million whether they realize it or not.  This week we are at HIMSS12 in Las Vegas meeting members of the IT medical community – an appropriate venue for such high-stakes gambling.  How are these people gambling with so much money?  The average cost of a data breach is $214 per record, or $7.2 million for an organization.  This figure is determined not only by direct costs of a data breach, such as notification and legal defense costs that impact the bottom line for companies, but also indirect costs like lost customer business due to abnormal churn.

Is there a way to make sure you aren’t putting your organization in such risk?  The HITECH Act, the compliance regulation that the medical community is concerned with, says that the only way to avoid a breach notification is through the use of industry standard encryption such as AES, and appropriate encryption key management technologies.  Other compliance regulations (such as PCI DSS) go as far as REQUIRING protecting Personally Identifiable Information (PII) with encryption and key management – not just to receive a breach notification exemption.

Becoming compliant with these regulations doesn’t have to be hard (though it can be).  Townsend Security has made it easy (saving your organization time and money) with NIST-certified AES encryption for all the major enterprise platforms, as well as a FIPS 140-2 certified encryption key management hardware security module (HSM).  For those organizations who are already encrypting but need key management, our encryption key manager can easily work with your existing database (SQL, Oracle, DB2, etc.) to help meet compliance requirements that call for separation of duties and dual control.

Insist on NISTIf you aren’t familiar with NIST and FIPS 140-2 certifications, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) provides them to encryption and key management solutions after they undergo a rigorous testing process.  The testing is carried out by independent testing labs who then report the results directly to NIST for validation.  Only the most dedicated security vendors are able to pass the tests and achieve NIST and FIPS 140-2 certifications.  Not only are these certifications essential for meeting compliance regulations, but they provide you an ease of mind that a third-party has verified the integrity of the product.

So are you gambling with $7.2 million?  If you aren’t protecting your PII with encryption and key management you might be.  Take the first step for help and call our gambling hotline (800-357-1019) or send us an email.  We’d be glad to help you step away from the table.

Learn more about proper encryption and key management best practices for HIPAA and HITECH Act in our white paper titled "Achieve Safe-Harbor Status from HITECH Act Breach Notification".

Are you an ISV?  Visit our ISV Partner Program page for more information on becoming a partner or download our white paper titled Healthcare ISVs: Critical Issues in Meeting HITECH Data Protection Regulations.

Topics: Compliance, HITECH, HIPAA, Trade Shows

Encrypting & Protecting Medical Data – Some Thoughts Before HIMSS

Posted by Patrick Townsend on Feb 13, 2012 1:00:00 AM

Breach Notification Safe-Harbor

PCI Compliance White Paper

Download the white paper "Achieve Safe-Harbor Status from HITECH Act Breach Notification" to learn more about encyption and key management best practices.

Click Here to Download Now

Anyone who works with software applications in the medical segment is painfully aware of the complexity of patient information.  You mix a lot of personal information about patients, their family, their care givers, diagnostic information, pharmaceuticals, and insurance providers together, and you get a witches brew of data that would make your head spin.

Mix in a rapidly changing regulatory environment and you’ve really got a headache!

Medical organizations and application vendors have a lot on their plates keeping up with all of this, and now with new Electronic Medical Record (EMR) requirements coming into effect, they have to become experts in encryption technologies to protect patient information.

The lights are blinking red; system overload!

We’ve been helping medical organizations meet their data protection requirements with our encryption and key management solutions for several years. Our commitment to industry certifications such as FIPS 140-2 fits well with HIPAA and HITECH Act guidelines on data protection. When you read about NIST recommendations for encryption and key management best practices, we are already there.

Software ISVs who serve the medical industry also need partner-friendly solutions. ISVs need more than just a technical solution. They need someone they can call on to explain data protect best practices, who can assist in the implementation of encryption and key management, and who can help them stay competitive in their markets. The last thing an ISV needs is to integrate some expensive technology into their solutions and then find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. I am proud of our partner program and its focus on making sure our partners are successful both in their technology initiatives, and in their businesses, too.

This will be our first year at the HIMSS conference in Las Vegas, but we are bringing a lot of experience in the medical segment to the show.  I hope you find the show interesting and helpful, and that you come by our booth (#14124).

Click me

Topics: HITECH, HIPAA, Trade Shows

Dreamforce to You: Protecting Sensitive Information

Posted by Luke Probasco on Jan 17, 2012 8:04:00 AM
Dreamforce to YouAs the social revolution moves into the business world, protecting your data is more important than ever.  This was a key takeaway for attendees of the recent “Dreamforce to You” event in Seattle, WA, hosted by Salesforce.

Similar, yet smaller in scale to the Dreamforce conference held annually in San Francisco, this event brought together sales and marketing professionals who use Salesforce.com (a cloud-based Customer Relationship Manager) to see what is new with the CRM, how it can help you do your job better, as well as allow attendees to network with peers.  Additionally, Peter Coffee, an IT visionary who acts as the VP and Head of Platform Research at Salesforce.com, delivered an inspirational keynote titled “Toward the Social Enterprise: Trust; Vision; Revolution”.

The focus of both Dreamforce and “Dreamforce to You” is that by and large  business is embracing the social revolution.  Whether you are Bank of America and helping your customers find the nearest ATM or are collaborating with co-workers internally using social tools, businesses are migrating to the social world.  During the keynote, Peter Coffee presented a slide titled “Social is a model, not an app.”  By being social, businesses are able to work more efficiently and reach more customers in ways that were never thought possible.  “Salesforce is not just using social tools but instead is driven and formed by the social network.”

As Peter Coffee continued to discuss cloud computing, the future of IT platforms, and how businesses are “going social”, he conveyed a key concept – companies need to protect their sensitive information.  

Insist on NISTWe couldn’t agree more.  As a security company, this is something we have been saying since the beginning.  We have offered NIST-validated AES encryption for all the major enterprise platforms for over ten years, been securing managed file transfers with PGP encryption, and recently stepped up our game with a FIPS 140-2 compliant encryption key management HSM.  Simply put, we are helping organizations protect their sensitive information and meet compliance regulations with certified encryption solutions.

Occasionally we hear “I don’t need encryption, nothing can get inside my network” (De-Perimeterization concept). The truth is, no matter how many of the latest and greatest network security devices you implement, there is still nothing as fail-safe as properly encrypting your data.  As keynote speaker Peter Coffee would say about investing in the wrong technology, “doing it better is still doing the wrong thing.”

For more information on data privacy, download our podcast Data Privacy for the Non-Technical Person.  Patrick Townsend, our Founder & CTO, discusses what PII (personally identifiable information) is, what the most effective methods for protecting PII, as well as the first steps your company should take towards establishing a data privacy strategy.

Click me

Topics: NIST, De-Perimeterization, Data Privacy, Trade Shows, FIPS-140, AES Encryption

2011 PASS Summit: Are You Encrypting?

Posted by Luke Probasco on Oct 18, 2011 9:55:00 AM

PASS key managementLast week Townsend Security exhibited at the PASS Summit and showed off our new encryption key management appliance.  This was our first time attending this show, and if you aren’t familiar with the PASS Summit, it is the world’s largest, most-focused, and most intensive conference for Microsoft SQL Server and BI professionals.  This year's show was the biggest conference to date with over 4000 attendees.

This was a good show for us.  The SQL Server community really understands the importance of encryption and key management.  Microsoft made encryption much easier with the introduction of Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) in SQL Server 2008 and opened the doors for proper encryption key management with Extensible Key Management (EKM).  With this combination, it is now easier than ever for organizations to be encrypting their sensitive data with “best practices.”

It was encouraging to see how many people were encrypting their sensitive data using TDE.  When we told them about our encryption key management appliance, their eyes lit up and said, “I need that!  We need to meet PCI DSS and get our encryption keys off of our SQL Server.”  We were more than happy to tell them how easy it is to start properly managing their encryption keys – both technically and financially.  Our client installs easily - just like any other application on SQL Server and set up is a breeze.  When the average cost of a data breach to an organization is over $7 million dollars, it is getting easier to justify the business case for proper encryption and key management.

Of course not everyone was encrypting.  Some people just didn’t need to.  Others though, when asked about encryption, hung their head and said “No, but I probably should be.”  And these were people in the medical and financial industries!  (Note to self: don’t give these organizations my personal information.)

The concept of “leaving your keys under the mat” really resonated with this crowd.  If they didn’t know the importance of separating encryption keys from the encrypted data before they visited us, they certainly knew it well by the time they left.  We look forward to attending this show again next year and maybe the people who currently aren’t encrypting our private information will be first in line next year telling us about their “nightmare audit.”

For more information on our encryption key management appliance, built specifically for SQL Server, view our webinar “Encryption Key Management with Microsoft SQL Server.”  See how easy it can be to implement strong key management and hear what hundreds of attendees learned at PASS last week.

Click me

Topics: SQL Server 2008, SQL, Trade Shows

Exhbiting at the PASS Summit 2011 in Seattle

Posted by Chris Sylvester on Oct 11, 2011 7:50:00 AM

PASS SummitIn just one more day, we'll experience another first at Townsend Security,  we will be exhibiting for the first time at the PASS Summit.  The Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) Summit is the largest conference of the year for SQL Server professionals.   Earlier this year we joined the Microsoft Partner Program and earned a competency in Business Intelligence, we visited the Worldwide Partner Conference and just a couple of months ago we launched our new HSM for SQL Server. I guess you could say exhibiting at the PASS Summit is the next logical next step for us.

While at the conference we look forward to getting to know this market personally by meeting several new SQL Server customers and business partners.  Attendees will be among the first to see our newly announced encryption key management hardware security module (HSM), Alliance Key Manager for SQL Server, which simplifies how organizations can meet compliance requirements and removes cost as a barrier for a professional key  encryption key management solution. We will get to discuss some of the key features of the product:

  • Seamless integration with SQL Server 2008
  • Uses Microsoft’s Extensible Key Management (EKM) interface to support Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) on SQL Server 2008.
  • Automation of all key management tasks including rotation, retrieval, and generation in a central location.   
  • Priced to meet the budget needs of every enterprise.  An entry level, 2-server bundle (primary and failover) is available for under $12,000 list.

We look forward to meeting SQL Server users, enthusiasts and developers at the PASS Summit -- If you are going to be there, be sure to stop by our booth #335.  It will be great to meet you!

If you aren't able to make it to the conference and would like to learn more about encryption key management on Microsoft SQL Server, view our webinar "Encryption Key Management with Microsoft SQL Server."  We think this webinar is informative and shows just how easy it is to implement encryption key management on your SQL server.

 

webinar-key-management-on-sql-server

 


Topics: Trade Shows

COMMON 2011 - Encryption, Customers, and Education

Posted by John Earl on May 12, 2011 12:43:00 PM
COMMON 2011 User GroupWe're just recently back from the COMMON 2011 conference in Minneapolis.  What a great experience for Townsend Security and our IBM i customers.  The encryption and key management sessions that Patrick and I presented were well received and well attended.  Many of the attendees were interested in the mechanics of encryption, and many of those were pleasantly surprised to learn that there is now a way to encrypt database fields without doing massive application program changes.  

At COMMON we announced our new Automated Encryption capability that is now embedded in our benchmark AES/400 product.  Automated Encryption allows you to insert encryption at a database level, rather than at the application programming layer, and that greatly simplifies the task of encryption.  Automated Encryption increases the efficacy of encryption too.  By enforcing encryption at the database level, you eliminate the chance that an application program might be unwittingly introduced that might not follow your encryption standard.  Encryption at the database level ensures that every credit card, or every social security number, is encrypted in the database - without the need for additional application programming.

Another bright spot at COMMON was the number of customers that were either already at IBM i V7R1, or were planning to get there in the next few months.  With the status of OS version V5R4 uncertain (it's End-of-Support date has been extended by IBM at least twice), there was a lot of discussion about what the right upgrade path is.  V7R1 has been out in the market for over a year, and with great new features like the database FieldProc (Field Procedures) It was encouraging to see how many customers were either already on V7R1, or had immediate plans to move there.  A number of customers that currently on OS version V5R4 were planning to move directly to V7R1 without stopping at V6R1.  While they don't avoid the problems of program conversion at V6R1, they do get to the stable, current release in one step rather than two.

Finally, it was great to talk to all of the people that stopped by our booth during the conference.  We spoke to over 300 people during the two and a half day expo.  For those of you that asked questions or made data requests, we are in the process of going through our notes and providing the requested feedback - someone will reach out to you soon.  Most everyone else will have gotten an invitation to follow us on LinkedIn, FaceBook or Twitter - that's a great way to keep up with what is happening in the encryption world and to stay on top of data privacy trends.  We're always producing new educational material about encryption, keymanagement, and data protection, so it's a great way to stay current on those topics.

And for those of you that couldn't make it to the COMMON conference, you can still follow us on social media, and we hope to see you at a tradeshow in the future!

jte

Topics: COMMON, IBM i, Trade Shows

The IBM i Community Prepares for COMMON

Posted by Chris Sylvester on Apr 18, 2011 2:00:00 AM

We have made our plans to be at COMMON in Minneapolis. Have you?


I love encryptionIt’s almost here, that time of year when IBM System i (AS/400, iSeries) customers gather as a community to learn and collaborate about what is new with the platform.  It's almost time for COMMON, the largest gathering of IBM i users in the US.  This year the event is in Minneapolis, not too far from Rochester, MN – best knows as the "home of the AS/400".   You could say the AS/400 faithful are returning to the mothership.

Of course we are planning on being at COMMON,  we look forward to attending it every year.  It’s a great opportunity for us to visit with many of our customers,  catch up with our peers and meet new members of the IBM i community.   In addition to exhibiting at COMMON, John Earl and Patrick Townsend will be presenting sessions on data privacy.  John and Patrick are regulars at COMMON and their sessions are always well attended.  Here are some details about what they are presenting and when.

Encryption 101, John Earl 
May 1, 11AM – 12:15PM
101 H Minneapolis Convention Center

Security Challenge: Let's Break In!, John Earl
May 3, 2PM – 3:15PM
101 H Minneapolis Convention Center

Data Security and Encryption, Patrick Townsend
May 3: 9:30AM – 10:45AM
101 H Minneapolis Convention Center

Tokenization, Patrick Townsend
May 3:  5PM – 6:15PM
101 H Minneapolis Convention Center

So, as you make your plans on who to visit in the Expo be sure to include us on your list -- booth #511.   We are anxious to talk to our customers and old friends and look forward to making a few new friends as well.  

There are a lot of exciting things happening with Townsend in 2011, new products are on the horizon and updates to our most popular products; AES/400, FTP Manager and Key Manager will be coming soon.  Be sure to stop by and learn more!   If you would like to schedule a one-on-one with John or Patrick, send an email to marketing@townsendsecurity.com and we’ll make sure to accommodate your request.

See you in Minneapolis.

Topics: COMMON, IBM i, Trade Shows