Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC) and storage firms McData and Decru have joined forces to create a wide-area replication system designed to simplify back-up procedures and improve security for tape vaulting.

The companies have integrated FSC's CentricStor virtual tape appliance with McData's Edge3000 storage routers and Decru's DataFort storage security appliances.

The product will cover back-up and disaster recovery operations that frequently span hundreds or thousands of kilometres.

"Financial institutions, healthcare, manufacturing and the public sector are particularly vulnerable, especially if tapes need to be archived or moved to a secure remote location," said Helmut Beck, vice president of storage at FSC.

"By using the secure wide-area replication of tape data over CentricStor's virtual tape services the user can eliminate such risks while retaining unlimited back-up performance in the data centre.

"This joint solution grants our customers comprehensive protection of their sensitive data."

Organisations with distributed data centres often face the challenge of creating back-up tapes at one location, and physically transporting them to remote locations for disaster recovery purposes.

This is costly in terms of time and money, and leaves sensitive data vulnerable during transit.

Customers can now back up data securely to physical tape at a remote facility over a wide area network connection, while eliminating back-up and restore bottlenecks for the entire data centre environment.

"Identity theft is at an all-time high, and attackers are getting smarter. Enterprises are recognising that security must be integrated into all aspects of data management," said Henk Jan Spanjaard, EMEA managing director at Decru.