This year’s NonStop Technical Boot Camp (#NonStopTBC24) has come and gone. Sessions were conducted that covered a multitude of topics. Members of the HPE NonStop team, together with representatives from major NonStop vendors, were on hand to detail strategies behind directions being taken across their respective product roadmaps. What was addressed on the event floor often carried over to sidebar conversations over lunch, into planned gatherings of the evening, as well as into the late hours, as multiple networking opportunities gave participants ample time to raise questions and have their favorite topics addressed. There was no shortage of opinions, just as there was an ample supply of knowledgeable attendees always at hand.
It is the very essence of why events such as NonStopTBC24 continue to attract a crowd, and for ETI-NET, it is encouraging to see a sizable turnout each time we participate. Like everyone else who was present for the event, we began the week wondering where the ebb and flow associated with shared information would take us, but as always, one or two topics surfaced quickly. This year, no topic seemed to be higher on attendees’ agendas than security and compliance. With software miscues, network glitches, and sophisticated scams taking out so much of the global infrastructure almost weekly, it’s clear that we, unfortunately, live in growing, chaotic times. And no enterprises seem immune from bad actors leveraging IT breaches to extort and exploit for financially motivated reasons
For members of the NonStop community, there has been a rapid awakening that they are unlikely to be immune from such attacks. As ETI-NET presented at the TBC, while external actors remain the top catalyst for breaches, the risks that come internally have nearly doubled over the past year. System intrusion was now at the top of the list with regards to how today’s IT can suffer serious compromise. The optimal approach to addressing these intrusions is to remove individuals’ sole control and responsibility for actions pertinent to the ongoing operation of the enterprise through the implementation of separation of duty.
For ETI-NET, working back from protecting NonStop data assets through immutability and documented practices that meet compliance requirements, it has become a recognizable fact that separation of duty plays a significant role in helping mitigate system intrusion from insider threat. “We are all familiar with the requirements of financial institutions, especially when it comes to implementing two-step authentication,” said Mike Mitsch, ETI-NET Director, Business Development. “When it comes to NonStop systems and the daily interaction with systems and operational teams, separation of functions is paramount to ensure no one party has the ‘keys to the kingdom.’”
Historically, ETI-NET has continuously been at the forefront of data backup security. This focus and learnings have created an environment within ETI-NET that ensures security and compliance, which are paramount priorities across our product suite. Immutability implemented through the separation of duty can be seen present in ETI-NET products such as BackBox® / QoreStor® and S3 storage, where the backup and protection of data is mandatory and ensures the NonStop backup data remains uncontaminated is not only a priority but a compliance requirement.
The separation of duties associated with BackBox® / QoreStor® and S3 storage is just one example of the steps taken by ETI-NET. “Based on our learnings to protect NonStop data, the ETI-NET product portfolio including Sentinel and MultiBatch have, and will continue, to incorporate best practices associated with separation of duty to assist the NonStop environment realize digital resilience through ‘security and restoration.’”
When it comes to providing protection, there’s no place for singular responsibilities. With ETI-NET’s product suite, NonStop customers benefit from the separation of duties in various ways. For example, with BackBox® and QoreStor®, NonStop customers can secure data before it leaves the VTC (Virtual Tape Controller), and realize immutable retention periods, transparent to the NonStop DSM/TC catalog which meet and exceed compliance standards verified through independent 3rd Party Data Immutability Compliance Assessment.” said Mike Mitsch. Another example of this separation of duty is the modernization and resilience incorporated into MultiBatch to support highly customized batch calendars, allowing sophisticated job dependencies created by Administrators and with roles and responsibilities designed for the role of Operators, delivered through modernized GUIs.
This underpins resiliency and protection as responsibilities are separated by placing the administration (job creation) and the operational (job processing) in the hands of different personnel with different roles – a practice that is strongly encouraged by all parties associated with security. With the latest release of Sentinel, the same separation of duty applies to administration and operations for application and system monitoring to view and interact within controlled limitations. Furthermore, the new Data Storage Service serves as a record for forensics experts to analyze NonStop behavior as well as it has the ability to monitor and drill down into the rest of the ETI-NET product suite, such as BackBox® and QoreStor®. Through this integration, as well as the ability to add other applications, Sentinel provides the critical information required to resolve problems quicker, as well as valuable historical information that can be used in forecasting demand in GreenLake consumption models. It becomes readily visible should something out of the ordinary take place where those individuals working out of sight compromise your NonStop system either deliberately or simply by making mistakes.
During NonStopTBC24, we engaged and listened to the global NonStop community regarding just how strongly ETI-NET has incorporated industry and customer-specific requirements to develop innovative solutions. For some time, we have reinforced these pursuits with our support for rule 3:2:1:x as well as demonstrating our role within the Digital Resilient Framework. Given the breadth and momentum of our product portfolio, our family of products is also embracing incorporating the same resiliency and modernization initiatives for NonStop systems in a similar manner as to what we have evolved with BackBox®.
Security, protection, separation of duty, modernization, recoverability. The message coming from ETI-NET is about all of this and more and was the hallmark for all undertaken at NonStopTBC24. If you missed out on an opportunity to talk to us or to attend our sessions and would like to learn more about the latest updates and about how the ETI-NET suite of NonStop products helps to protect your NonStop systems, please feel free to reach out to our team, as follows:
Web – https://etinet.com/contact-us/
Phone – (514) 395 1200
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