Ctera Earning US Federal Government Validation

CTERA Networks, Ltd announced that the CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is Federal Information Processing Standards Publication 140-2 (FIPS 140-2) validated.

The security designation represents high level of data encryption and one of the reasons why the world’s most security-conscious organizations – including federal and defense organizations – choose CTERA for their digital transformation initiatives.

CTERA provides a cyber-hardened platform that enables content collaboration and data protection certified to meet the requirements of the sensitive workloads, using end-to-end security with customer controlled key management and authentication.

The FIPS 140-2 validation process is known for its rigor and is required for providing services to highly secure organizations like US federal government and defense agencies. Many vendors list their systems as ‘compliant’ with FIPS 140-2, but not all have been validated by a third-party testing laboratory to meet requirements for areas such as random number generation, key management, and approved algorithms. CTERA’s edge filers, software agents, and portal are all included under the validated designation.

“CTERA fills a void in the federal sector created by cloud solutions that cannot offer total privacy, security, compliance, and ownership of organizational data,” said Shawn Harbert, senior solutions architect at World Wide Technology, Inc., a technology integrator. “CTERA’s highly secure approach to content collaboration and data protection strengthens our defense solutions portfolio and helps us engage the most security-conscious organizations in the world.“

“The modernization of aging file services is a top priority for government and defense agencies, but cloud transformation initiatives introduce security risks that are unacceptable for these types of organizations,” said Aron Brand, CTO, CTERA. “CTERA addresses these challenges with an on-premises, private file services platform that delivers the same resiliency, productivity and elasticity as cloud based file services, while meeting the stringent security requirements of FIPS 140-2.“

CTERA has powered the file services initiatives of several of the world’s largest and most secure government and defense organizations. In 2016 CTERA was awarded a contract from DISA (Defense Information Systems Agency) to provide private cloud content collaboration services to the US Department of Defense (DoD), and added support for Common Access Cards authentication technology (CAC) for government-issued smart-cards. CTERA has since expanded its presence across various DoD agencies, federal organizations, and government defense contractors.

CTERA’s military-grade architecture includes security features beyond encryption including Active Directory/LDAP and single sign-on (SSO) integrations, multi-tenancy, data loss prevention (DLP), and antivirus support – all from an in-firewall deployment. The FIPS 140-2 certification is another proof point of CTERA’s commitment to offering a secure enterprise file services platform to its defense customers.