El Fresko Introducing MagnaStor

El Fresko Technologies introduced MagnaStor, a patent-pending software solution that ensures reliable, easy-to-use disk-based archiving to protect businesses and preserve their critical data in today’s heightened age of compliance. It is the only solution that provides certainty of data preservation with definitive proof of authenticity while delivering outstanding cost efficiencies.

"Preserving digital information is an issue impacting companies of all sizes across countless industries," said Mark Fowlie, CEO of El Fresko Technologies. "The regulations that businesses need to comply with may vary, but they all need to preserve data, safeguard it against tampering and corruption, and prove its authenticity in a way that is irrefutable."

The MagnaStor advantage
Facing an exponential growth of critical business data and intensifying regulations over how information is preserved and authenticated, companies are quickly recognizing the limitations of traditional archival storage systems.

"The way that organizations manage and store digital information has never been under greater scrutiny than it is today. Regulators, courts, shareholders, partners, customers and others have high expectations for the integrity, security, and privacy of the information we control," said Barclay T. Blair, Director of the Information Governance practice at Forensics Consulting Solutions LLC. "As such, it is critical that organizations look for storage and archiving solutions that comply with the most stringent requirements while still delivering enterprise-class performance."

Magnetic disk offers a high-performance storage option with an ever-shrinking price tag, but its inherent characteristics require careful management to attain the level of reliability needed for long-term data preservation.

MagnaStor is engineered to overcome the limitations of magnetic storage. It offers the fundamental benefits of WORM (write-once, read-many) operation on magnetic media, preventing operations from overwriting previously written physical sectors on the disk. A fully managed environment within the file system itself uniquely tracks and monitors data throughout its lifecycle. Continuous monitoring detects and autocorrects hardware-related errors, tampering or inconsistencies. The result is a reliable, easy-to-use file system for compliance archiving.

Delivering reliability in disk-based archiving
Powered by an embedded policy-based journaling engine, MagnaStor ensures that a company’s information policies are strictly applied to data. Approved operations – such as creating a file or directory, writing to or renaming a file, and file retention/destruction operations – are permanently recorded in the archive. Each event creates a subsequent entry that is never overwritten or deleted. Digital fingerprints are applied to all file system contents, including the solution’s built-in journal, and are used to validate the entire system’s integrity and authenticity at all times.

Data preservation now and for the future
Whether for compliance, corporate governance or digital-asset protection, a company’s information archive must preserve data in its exact state for easy retrieval and future authentication.

Through its journal, MagnaStor provides a self-checking, tamper-resistant record of the entire file system history. Any file at any point in time can be retrieved for audit, recovery or review purposes by simply playing back journal entries to the desired time frame to show the full chain of custody and present data in its original state. Even migrations are recorded, providing a complete accounting of the archive’s history.

Unmatched authenticity
Unlike competing solutions, MagnaStor’s unified approach ensures there are no disconnects between file data and file history. This unique solution binds the historical journal record, all file system structures and user data in an unbroken chronological journal for each file. This is particularly valuable in support of e-Discovery and litigation processes because companies can produce clear audit reports that are derived directly from the file system journal record. As a result, auditors and non-IT personnel alike are able to demonstrate the entire chain of custody for any file and verify its authenticity.

Low total cost of ownership
A software-only solution, MagnaStor lowers the total cost of ownership for data archiving. It utilizes existing hardware, runs across a variety of conventional platforms and operating systems, and does not require extensive reconfiguration of existing applications. As such, companies can protect their existing investment in storage and are not locked in to long-term hardware investments from a single vendor.

"For more than two decades, thousands of companies in dozens of countries around the world have trusted El Fresko with the preservation of their sensitive business information," said Mr. Fowlie. "We look forward to building upon this success with MagnaStor to become the world’s most trusted archiving storage and compliance partner."

MagnaStor is available immediately.