Cisco and RSA are working together to develop technology that will help customers improve and simplify the encryption of confidential information – such as medical records, social security and credit card numbers.

The technologies will help customers encrypt data-at-rest on tapes and other types of storage media and manage the associated encryption keys within the storage area network infrastructure.

“Security threats are no longer confined to companies with backup tapes stored at an off-site facility. Now companies of all sizes are exploring encryption because of the real threat of losing data or having it stolen,” said Rajeev Bhardwaj, director of product management, Data Centre Business unit at Cisco. “By combining RSA’s enterprise encryption key management with Cisco high performance Storage Media Encryption technology, we are providing our mutual customers a simpler way to protect data stored across the storage area network.”

According to Dennis Hoffman, vice president and general manager for Data Security and chief strategy officer at RSA, “RSA and Cisco are working together to simplify the deployment and management of encryption in the storage area network fabric, which will greatly reduce the complexity and disruption that businesses are struggling with today.”