Our View: Encryption is too hard

According to a Symantec study, 63% of IT pros say a "data leak" would wreak havoc. And 59% of those pros are girding themselves for a "major loss-of-information event at least once every five years." Scary news, but not scary enough to get non-encryptors to scramble those tape-borne bytes.

Storage managers will take the hit for lost tape data, but there's plenty of blame to go around, starting with storage vendors. With pro-prietary encryption key management schemes, it's no wonder storage teams are loathe to take the plunge, as getting locked into one encryption vendor means forever. Vendors can offer all kinds of encryption options, but until they support a unified, or at least federated, key management system, encryption will remain a hard sell.

--Rich Castagna