SECURING FIBRE CHANNEL FABRICS - Brocade

Encrypting Data-at-RestTraining and Awareness Best Practices Summary• Train staff, security and storage administrators as well asmanagement• Raise security awareness of the risks/vulnerabilities involvedin a SAN environmentPolicies and PlansThe SAN security policy outlines the spirit of how the SAN environmentshould be managed and operated.All enterprise data centers have an IT security policy in place but veryfew have a specific SAN security policy. In itself, this is not so terrible, butinexplicably IT security policies are seldom applied to the SAN environment,and the truth is that most IT security policies could be applieddirectly to the SAN environment without any change. For example, it maybe a defined policy requirement to use SSH instead of telnet to accessthe CLI on a server. This could easily be extended to the SAN environmentand SSH could be used to access the CLI on switches and theother SAN devices. In the absence of a specific SAN security policy, SANadministrators should follow the spirit of the IT security policy to managetheir SAN.A disaster recovery or business continuance plan is another usefulcomponent of an IT security strategy. As with policies, DR/BC plans inplace do not usually include the SAN environment specifically. The SANenvironment does have a specific architecture, configuration information,accounts and passwords, and a host of other features that needto be replicated in the event of a disaster. If a specific DR or BC planfor the SAN is not feasible, then the existing DR/BC plan shouldinclude the SAN environment.The last plan of concern is the computer security incident response(CSIR) plan. An incident response plans outlines in detail what needsto be done in the event of a security breach. It usually involves the creationof a CSIR team (CSIRT), which will be mobilized when an incidentoccurs. The CSIRT is usually composed of employees from variousgroups across an organization, for whom this is not their primary role;although technical people are required to address the technicalaspects of the response. There is a need for Human Resources specialiststo deal with HR issues (such as dismissing an employee) orpublic relations issues resulting from the incident in order to preventSecuring Fibre Channel Fabrics 117