EMC releases first RSA-integrated offering

Six months on from its acquisition of RSA Security, EMC has announced that it has finally integrated the company’s technology into its high end storage platforms.

EMC’s Symmetrix DMX-3 is the first cab off the rank and now features a tamper-proof audit log, enhanced its disk erasure technology and the RSA-powered Symmetrix Service Credential, which requires authentication of users accessing the Symmetrix service processor.

EMC has also introduced support for 4 GB/s fibre channel and FICON connectivity, RAID 6 support, dynamic cache partitioning, Symmetrix priority controls and SRDF/A reserve capacity.

Discussing the additional security features, EMC product marketing manager Shane Moore said that prior to the integration the platforms had a user ID and password and typically had a company-wide firewall put in to prevent external access.

“With the integration there is additionally a changing code which users must use with the password and ID which means that shared passwords alone can’t be used to access the platform.”

Despite the short lead time between RSA’s acquisition and commercial release of the integrated technology, Moore said there had been no rush to release the upgraded DMX-3s to the market.

“Part of why SecureID is successful is that it can be integrated quite rapidly,” he said.

“RSA’s development team of about 100 developers in Brisbane also played a major role in the integration.”

While DMX-3s equipped with the new capabilities are expected to ship this quarter, Moore said that the software-based features would be also be pushed out to all DMX-3s purchased in the last two years.

End-users could also expect to see similar capabilities integrated into products such as EMC’s Clariion range of mid-market networked attached storage systems within the next 12 months, he said.