A government border control agency needed to encrypt sensitive personal data from its border control intelligence system to comply with privacy laws. The agency implemented Bloombase's Spitfire StoreSafe and KeyCastle solutions to encrypt data at rest without changing the existing system or workflow. This provided encryption of data in the storage area network, databases, reports, and backups while maintaining system performance.

1. CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT
Bloombase® Spitfire StoreSafe™
Storage Security Server
A Government Bloombase® Spitfire KeyCastle™
Key Management Server
Border Control
Agency
Government organization secures privacy of sensitive personal border con-
trol data of a data warehouse system using Bloombase® Spitfire StoreSafe™
storage encryption and Bloombase® Spitfire KeyCastle™ key management
security solution
AT A GLANCE
ABOUT THE CUSTOMER WHY BLOOMBASE SOLUTIONS
• Government agency controlling • Enabled customer to leverage exist-
border entrance of people and issue ing hardware and software
of personal identification and travel • Provided comprehensive key and
documents encrypted storage management
• Employees: More than 12,000 • Platform and application neutral
• Scalable and extensible
SUMMARY • Custom cipher support
To protect privacy of sensitive personal IMPLEMENTATION HIGHLIGHTS
information of an off-the-shelf business
intelligence and reporting system Was first organization in public sector
according to regional personal data to institute an end-to-end persistence
privacy laws data protection from data extraction,
transform and load (ETL), data ware-
KEY CHALLENGES housing, reporting, backup and archi-
val
• No change to end user, administrator
and operator workflow KEY BENEFITS
• No significant degradation of system
throughput and response • Immediate information privacy regu- Overview
• Off-the-shelf data warehouse system latory compliance
cannot be altered • Transparent deployment A border control government organization runs an intelligence
• No coding required • High encryption performance
• No hardware, system and application
system to keep track of entrance and exit of people for collection
• No system response degradation
change • Highly available and fault-tolerant
and analysis of movement habits of travelers.
• Deployment and data migration can
be committed in phases EXISTING ENVIRONMENT According to personal data privacy laws, such intelligence infor-
• Supports storage media including mation are under strict control and required to be secured by
SCSI disks, magnetic tapes and virtual • No data encryption in place strong encryption for all at-rest data on storage media including
tape libraries (VTL) • Physical isolation of system hardware
• Protects cooked and uncooked/raw
hard disks, optical disks, magnetic tapes, etc.
in data center
filesystems with a single solution
Working under tight time constraints, the customer is required to
HARDWARE
PROJECT OBJECTIVES implement effective data protection measures of the system,
• IBM p-Series servers which has been in operation for 5 years, in within 3 months’ time.
• Encrypts dynamic database data • EMC Symmetrix SAN With stringent constraints including no change to system infra-
stored in storage area network (SAN) • Brocade FC SAN switch structure and user/operator workflow as well as the requirement
and backup tapes • IBM tape library
• Protects filesystem objects, relational
to maintain the same level of service (system response, availabil-
• HP Integrity Server
databases, uncooked volume and ity, capacity, etc), end customer selected Bloombase® Spitfire
backup media StoreSafe™ enterprise storage security server to provide on-the-
OPERATING SYSTEM
• Interoperable with existing informa- fly encryption of their sensitive persistence data and Bloombase®
tion lifecycle management (ILM) Spitfire KeyCastle™ key management server for full lifecycle
• IBM AIX 5.3
system for automatic data persistence
• Redhat Enterprise Linux 4 management of their cryptographic keys.
SOLUTIONS AND SERVICES SOFTWARE
• Spitfire KeyCastle™ key management
An Ambitious Trial Project
• IBM OnDemand Content Manager
server
• IBM DB2 Universal Database The business intelligence system has been in operation for more
• Spitfire StoreSafe™ enterprise storage
• IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM)
security server than 5 years. Like many core business operations systems in the
IT infrastructure of this customer, the system is mission-critical.

2. As a pilot project for data protection, the encryp- dated or less frequently accessed reports to tape staging storage and the report repository.
tion solution has to prove fault-tolerant, highly libraries for archival, freeing up fast disk storage
available and disaster-recovery ready. space for new and frequently accessed reports. To customer’s biggest frustration, their proof-of-
On the other hand, if user retrieves a report that concept tests on filesystem encryption products
Border traveler information are submitted to the OnDemand finds archived, TSM will be triggered did not work out either. Yes, filesystem encryp-
system timely around the clock which contains to restore the report contents from backup tapes tion works fine with incoming data staging
sensitive personal information including travel- back to SAN disk for user’s retrieval. storage, database files and log files, however,
ers’ names, personal identification numbers filesystem encryption failed to work with the
such as identity card numbers, visa numbers report repository where the filesystem is un-
and passport identifiers etc., date and time of cooked, in other words, raw or no filesystem.
gate-in and gate-out, etc. Such information are
collected from various border control units from Customer did not prefer extra software to be
within the whole state and temporarily stored at "Bloombase Spitfire™ enterprise installed on their AIX application servers due to
a staging storage area of the system. An extrac- security solution brings you key their server capacity and audit requirements.
tion-transform-load (ETL) worker processes the management, file protection, The average processing time for report genera-
staging area for incoming traveler information. tion has to be kept within 30 seconds.
The ETL worker triggers a content filter to scan database protection, raw disk
for potential hazards. Viral and malicious con- encryption and backup encryp-
tents are rejected and moved to parking area for Turning Challenge into Op-
tion in a single solution at low
examination or disposal. Clean files are parsed,
contents extracted and loaded into a relation total cost of ownership (TCO)” portunity
database system powered by IBM DB2 Universal
Apart from support issues of various encryption
Database System.
products end customer considered, there were a
number of issues remained unsolved: an all-in-
End users of the system define reports to be run Thanks to IBM OnDemand Content Manager, DB2
one cryptographic key management system, a
and at what timely manner via IBM OnDemand UDB and TSM, the intelligence system works
scalable encryption platform that can scale up
Content Manager management console. When- seamlessly and at the best performance one
easily as to cope with growing needs of the
ever an analysis task is executed in the system, could get from an IBM Power platform fueled
system, a cryptographic platform that supports a
a report file will be generated and stored at an with EMC Symmetrix SAN. However, when talk-
rich set of ciphers and in some special occa-
uncooked storage area managed by IBM Tivoli ing about data protection, customer faces their
sions, customer’s proprietary cipher algorithms,
Storage Manager (TSM). IBM OnDemand Content first challenge. The application is built on off-the
last but not least, platform independence and
Manager links the analysis task to the physical -shelf products that cannot be altered, therefore,
application independence to support potential
disk location(s) where the output reports are there is no way one can introduce data crypto-
future change of platform.
stored. On user’s retrieval of analysis results, graphic processing at the application level.
Content Manager reads the physical EMC stor-
End customer finally turned to Bloombase®
age area network (SAN) disk and presents the Customer hit their second challenge when they
Spitfire™ enterprise security solution installed
information to users in a readable form, or as stepped backward and considered database
onto HP Integrity Servers to meet their stringent
files to be exported for further analysis or report- encryption. Despite database encryption’s
security requirements.
ing use. difficulty on deployment and the vast amount of
database objects to get encryption configured,
Without the need to alter any of end users’ work-
IBM TSM manages information lifecycle of the database encryption products cannot solve data
flow, application and hardware platform, Spitfire
storage area by automatically offloading out- privacy problems on the incoming sensitive
StoreSafe™ virtualizes incoming data staging
storage, DB2 data file repository and OnDemand
Content Manager report repository as Spitfire
StoreSafe™ file-based and block-based virtual
storages.
Spitfire StoreSafe™ virtual storage offers a
secure virtual plain updateable view of the their
encrypted contents replica physically persisted
on disks. Thus, system and application remain
unchanged and access Spitfire StoreSafe™
secured storage contents as if they are normal
files and disks, but in reality, the sensitive data
are secured by strong encryption. Only when
OnDemand Content Manager and DB2 UDB
request for storage contents will trigger Spitfire
StoreSafe™ to decrypt the ciphered sensitive
data and when data are stored by Content Man-
ager or database records committed to DB2 will
trigger Spitfire StoreSafe™ to encrypt the sensi-
tive contents before they are physically written
to EMC SAN disk.
Spitfire StoreSafe™ enabled the customer to
migrate their whole data storage in phases
minimizing cutover windows and thus service
availability. TSM managed encrypted raw volume
as normal volumes without change with benefit
that data archived to backup tapes are in their
original secure ciphered form.
End customer enjoyed end-to-end data privacy
using Bloombase Spitfire™ security platform
meeting the toughest national data security
requirements at low total cost of ownership
(TCO).
© 2006 Bloombase Technologies. All rights reserved. Bloombase, Spitfire, Keyparc, StoreSafe, and other Bloombase products and services mentioned herein as well as their
respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Bloombase Technologies Ltd in Hong Kong, China and in several other countries all over the world. All other product and
service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.
The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for Bloombase products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements
accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Bloombase shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors
or omissions contained herein.
4AA0-0696EEP 09/2006