Exclusive Q&A with Cleversafe’s Russ Kennedy, Senior VP of Product Strategy and Consumer Solutions

With IT departments facing rising costs for their expanding data storage needs, leading private cloud storage provider Cleversafe offers cost effective and secure solutions for growing companies.

Cleversafe products disperse encrypted data to minimize storage space. Unlike replication based storage solutions which copy and save customer data multiple times, Cleversafe requires less storage space, therefore reducing costs while at the same time guarding against compromised data.

We talked to Senior VP of Product Strategy and Consumer Solutions Russ Kennedy about Cleversafe reducing costs for customers like Shutterfly and how it can satisfy data storage needs for mobile payment providers.

Greg Sweet: Can you briefly describe how Cleversafe manages storage for its clients?

Russ Kennedy: Cleversafe has created a hyperscale storage technology that solves some of the challenges presented by today’s data. Our patented technology drives up to 80 percent of storage costs from the business with Petabyte and beyond storage needs while enabling secure and reliable global access to information.

Have you noticed any recurring, industry wide storage issues that Cleversafe can helps solve?

Storage requirements have grown exponentially over the past decade and analysts are predicting that the growth rate will accelerate going forward. The challenge that comes with storing data generated by emerging technologies and new file formats such as 4K video, mobile applications, cloud services and more, gives new meaning to “big data,” which translates to storing data in Petabyes—a Petabyte is 1,024 terabytes. There are now an estimated 7,000 companies deploying a Petabyte or more of storage every year, ten years ago those estimates were only about 60 or 70. With that growth rate, it’s no longer sustainable or economical for these companies to use traditional or replication-based storage solutions—the high number of copies threatens data security as well as a company’s bottom line.

Can you tell us what some current customers were using previous to working with you and how Cleversafe has improved their storage needs?

Many of our customers were previously deploying traditional clustered NAS or traditional legacy storage systems. We are also seeing customers coming to Cleversafe who have tried DIY open source systems or public cloud solutions. Cleversafe’s technology is more secure and scalable, and easier to deploy at scale. We give customers confidence that their critical digital assets are protected and secure at a very compelling price point, especially at petabyte scale.

Regarding the recent big name retailers who were hit with stolen customer data, what makes Cleversafe different in the way it stores data?

Cleversafe’s storage solution uses a patented, geographically dispersed erasure coding and houses data as virtualized and encrypted “slices” spread across a network of storage nodes. Compared to traditional replication-based storage systems – which make full copies of information available in multiple locations – Cleversafe’s All or Nothing Transform (AONT) method encrypts data and spreads it across multiple devices, strengthening security and requiring a multi-site security breach in order to compromise the data.

Can you talk about “Secure Slice” and how “AONT” differs from other types of encryption?

As the website explains, the combination of encryption and erasure coding in a secret sharing method differs from other types of encryption because a pre-defined subset of slices is required to have sufficient information to decrypt the data and return it to the application in its original form. This means that less than a quorum of slices is cryptographically useless and 100% secure.

Can you describe an instance where Cleversafe’s technology could improve data security for a mobile payment provider?

If the mobile payment provider is using a traditional storage solution to store or archive payment records, then deploying a Cleversafe solution will ensure that their data is secured and protected from malicious or accidental compromise. Their customers can be assured that even in the case of a security breach the data is protected from exposure given the combined method of encryption and erasure coding. Today we don’t have any customers that are considered mobile payment providers, however we are engaging with financial services organizations and they are very impressed with our security, scalability and cost effectiveness.

In your experience, what industries are most in need of big data or petabyte storage?

A variety of service providers, government agencies, financial services organizations, oil and gas companies, life sciences organizations, as well as media and entertainment companies are all experiencing exponential data growth. Many of these organizations are storing massive amounts of unstructured data that can range anywhere from video and photos to genomic sequencing codes and satellite imagery.

What are some challenges that Cleversafe has faced when dealing with petabyte storage from a security standpoint?

Outdated file-based storage solutions rely on data duplication, which allows for additional ways of accessing customer data. These systems usually use RAID protection, which is not secure enough to store data when sizes reach the Petabyte level. RAID has high rebuild times and the chance to lose data is more likely as it grows. It can be a challenge to consolidate data if a customer previously had a traditional solution in place, however, once Cleversafe’s software is deployed, the result is a much more secure and efficient solution that is complex enough to keep hackers at bay.

Russ Kennedy, Senior Vice President of Product Strategy and Customer Solutions, Cleversafe

Russ Kennedy brings more than 20 years’ experience in the storage industry to Cleversafe as the company’s Senior Vice President of Product Strategy and Customer Solutions. Having rolled up his sleeves working on automated tape libraries, Russ is still attracted to the technological challenges that have shaped the industry and particularly to the innovative approach that Cleversafe delivers to storage.

Russ joined the company initially in 2007 and left in 2009, staying on in an advisory role. In 2011, Russ rejoined the company seeing a clear opportunity to solve the storage needs surrounding the exponential growth of big data and the unique impact that Cleversafe delivers over traditional systems.

Previously, Russ served as the Vice President of Competitive Intelligence at CA Technologies, and was the Senior Director of Engineering and Product Management at Thin Identity Corporation.Russ has an MBA from the University of Colorado at Denver and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Colorado State University.