Storage systems must provide reliable and convenient data access to all authorized users while simultaneously preventing threats coming from outside or even inside the enterprise. Security threats come in many forms, from unauthorized access to data, data tampering, denial of service, and obtaining privileged access to systems. According to the Storage Network Industry Association (SNIA), data security in the context of storage systems is responsible for safeguarding the data against theft, prevention of unauthorized disclosure of data, prevention of data tampering, and accidental corruption. This process ensures accountability, authenticity, business continuity, and regulatory compliance. Security for storage systems can be classified as follows: Data storage (data at rest, which includes data durability and immutability) Access to data Movement of data (data in flight) Management of data IBM® Spectrum Scale is a software-defined storage system for high performance, large-scale workloads on-premises or in the cloud. IBM SpectrumTM Scale addresses all four aspects of security by securing data at rest (protecting data at rest with snapshots, and backups and immutability features) and securing data in flight (providing secure management of data, and secure access to data by using authentication and authorization across multiple supported access protocols). These protocols include POSIX, NFS, SMB, Hadoop, and Object (REST). For automated data management, it is equipped with powerful information lifecycle management (ILM) tools that can help administer unstructured data by providing the correct security for the correct data. This IBM RedpaperTM publication details the various aspects of security in IBM Spectrum ScaleTM, including the following items: Security of data in transit Security of data at rest Authentication Authorization Hadoop security Immutability Secure administration Audit logging Security for transparent cloud tiering (TCT) Security for OpenStack drivers Unless stated otherwise, the functions that are mentioned in this paper are available in IBM Spectrum Scale V4.2.1 or later releases.

Having appropriate storage for hosting business-critical data and advanced Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) software for deep inspection, detection, and prioritization of threats has become a necessity for any business. This IBM® Redpaper publication explains how the storage features of IBM Spectrum® Scale, when combined with the log analysis, deep inspection, and detection of threats that are provided by IBM QRadar®, help reduce the impact of incidents on business data. Such integration provides an excellent platform for hosting unstructured business data that is subject to regulatory compliance requirements. This paper describes how IBM Spectrum Scale File Audit Logging can be integrated with IBM QRadar. Using IBM QRadar, an administrator can monitor, inspect, detect, and derive insights for identifying potential threats to the data that is stored on IBM Spectrum Scale. When the threats are identified, you can quickly act on them to mitigate or reduce the impact of incidents. We further demonstrate how the threat detection by IBM QRadar can proactively trigger data snapshots or cyber resiliency workflow in IBM Spectrum Scale to protect the data during threat. This third edition has added the section "Ransomware threat detection", where we describe a ransomware attack scenario within an environment to leverage IBM Spectrum Scale File Audit logs integration with IBM QRadar. This paper is intended for chief technology officers, solution engineers, security architects, and systems administrators. This paper assumes a basic understanding of IBM Spectrum Scale and IBM QRadar and their administration.

There is a growing insider security risk to organizations. Human error, privilege misuse, and cyberespionage are considered the top insider threats. One of the most dangerous internal security threats is the privileged user with access to critical data, which is the "crown jewels" of the organization. This data is on storage, so storage administration has critical privilege access that can cause major security breaches and jeopardize the safety of sensitive assets. Organizations must maintain tight control over whom they grant privileged identity status to for storage administration. Extra storage administration access must be shared with support and services teams when required. There also is a need to audit critical resource access that is required by compliance to standards and regulations. IBM® SecurityTM Verify Privilege Vault On-Premises (Verify Privilege Vault), formerly known as IBM SecurityTM Secret Server, is the next-generation privileged account management that integrates with IBM Storage to ensure that access to IBM Storage administration sessions is secure and monitored in real time with required recording for audit and compliance. Privilege access to storage administration sessions is centrally managed, and each session can be timebound with remote monitoring. You also can use remote termination and an approval workflow for the session. In this IBM Redpaper, we demonstrate the integration of IBM Spectrum® Scale and IBM Elastic Storage® Server (IBM ESS) with Verify Privilege Vault, and show how to use privileged access management (PAM) for secure storage administration. This paper is targeted at storage and security administrators, storage and security architects, and chief information security officers.

High-speed I/O workloads are moving away from the SAN to Ethernet and IBM® Spectrum Scale is pushing the network limits. The IBM Spectrum® Scale team discovered that many infrastructure Ethernet networks that were used for years to support various applications are not designed to provide a high-performance data path concurrently to many clients from many servers. IBM Spectrum Scale is not the first product to use Ethernet for storage access. Technologies, such as Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), scale out NAS, and IP connected storage (iSCSI and others) use Ethernet though IBM Spectrum Scale as the leader in parallel I/O performance, which provides the best performance and value when used on a high-performance network. This IBM Redpaper publication is based on lessons that were learned in the field by deploying IBM Spectrum Scale on Ethernet and InfiniBand networks. This IBM Redpaper® publication answers several questions, such as, "How can I prepare my network for high performance storage?", "How do I know when I am ready?", and "How can I tell what is wrong?" when deploying IBM Spectrum Scale and IBM Elastic Storage® Server (ESS). This document can help IT architects get the design correct from the beginning of the process. It also can help the IBM Spectrum Scale administrator work effectively with the networking team to quickly resolve issues.

This IBM® Redpaper introduces the IBM Spectrum® Scale Erasure Code Edition (ECE) as a scalable, high-performance data and file management solution. ECE is designed to run on any commodity server that meets the ECE minimum hardware requirements. ECE provides all the functionality, reliability, scalability, and performance of IBM Spectrum Scale with the added benefit of network-dispersed IBM Spectrum Scale RAID, which provides data protection, storage efficiency, and the ability to manage storage in hyperscale environments that are composed from commodity hardware. In this publication, we explain the benefits of ECE and the use cases where we believe it fits best. We also provide a technical introduction to IBM Spectrum Scale RAID. Next, we explain the key aspects of planning an installation, provide an example of an installation scenario, and describe the key aspects of day-to-day management and a process for problem determination. We conclude with an overview of possible enhancements that are being considered for future versions of IBM Spectrum Scale Erasure Code Edition. Overall knowledge of IBM Spectrum Scale Erasure Code Edition is critical to planning a successful storage system deployment. This paper is targeted toward technical professionals (consultants, technical support staff, IT Architects, and IT Specialists) who are responsible for delivering cost effective storage solutions. The goal of this paper is to describe the benefits of using IBM Spectrum Scale Erasure Code Edition for the creation of high performing storage systems.

With Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA), you can make a subset of a host's memory directly available to a remote host. RDMA is available on standard Ethernet-based networks by using the RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) interface. The RoCE network protocol is an industry-standard initiative by the InfiniBand Trade Association. This IBM® Redpaper publication describes how to set up RoCE to use within an IBM Spectrum® Scale cluster and IBM Elastic Storage® Systems (ESSs). This book is targeted at technical professionals (consultants, technical support staff, IT Architects, and IT Specialists) who are responsible for delivering cost-effective storage solutions with IBM Spectrum Scale and IBM ESSs.

Economic globalization requires data to be available globally. With most data stored in file systems, solutions to make this data globally available become more important. Files that are in file systems can be protected or shared by replicating these files to another file system that is in a remote location. The remote location might be just around the corner or in a different country. Therefore, the techniques that are used to protect and share files must account for long distances and slow and unreliable wide area network (WAN) connections. IBM® Spectrum Scale is a scalable clustered file system that can be used to store all kinds of unstructured data. It provides open data access by way of Network File System (NFS); Server Message Block (SMB); POSIX Object Storage APIs, such as S3 and OpenStack Swift; and the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) for accessing and sharing data. The IBM Aspera® file transfer solution (IBM Aspera Sync) provides predictable and reliable data transfer across large distance for small and large files. The combination of both can be used for global sharing and protection of data. This IBM RedpaperTM publication describes how IBM Aspera Sync can be used to protect and share data that is stored in IBM SpectrumTM Scale file systems across large distances of several hundred to thousands of miles. We also explain the integration of IBM Aspera Sync with IBM Spectrum ScaleTM and differentiate it from solutions that are built into IBM Spectrum Scale for protection and sharing. We also describe different use cases for IBM Aspera Sync with IBM Spectrum Scale.