Advancements in Storage Security Key Management Architecture Give Customers More Options and Flexibility with the Industry’s Most Secure, Automated, and Open Key Management Services

MILPITAS, Calif. October 9, 2006 – - NeoScale Systems Inc., the independent leader in enterprise storage security solutions, today announced partnerships with three industry leaders: Entrust, the world’s most relied upon security public key infrastructure (PKI) vendor; Symantec, a market leader in security-enabled data protection; and Optica Technologies, a leader in mainframe connectivity. These companies have partnered with NeoScale to help advance NeoScale’s key management solution architecture, deepen its support of multi- vendor storage security environments, and provide increased options for customers to leverage their existing functionality while maintaining a secure, flexible, and easy-to-use environment.

Designed to drive the adoption of open, standards-based key management systems, the NeoScale® solution architecture supports unified data-at-rest security across multiple technology environments, enabling greater ease of use for customers deploying both current and emerging encryption technologies.

“Customers have demanded that key management play in a broader infrastructure, including open system and mainframe environments. With this industry-leading architecture, NeoScale is delivering on the promise of multi-vendor key management for storage encryption solutions,” said Barbara Nelson, NeoScale CEO. “This unprecedented integration of storage and security vendors provides customers with more choice and the ability to protect information at all levels without the hassle of deploying different key management solutions to meet each of their audit and compliance encryption requirements.”

Key and Policy Management Advancements Through Partnerships

Managing the growing number of storage encryption keys for multiple encryption products is a daunting task. NeoScale’s comprehensive key management API program is designed to build on the CryptoStor® KeyVaultTM architecture of providing a single, unified management interface. The addition of API partners eliminates the cumbersome task of separately managing each individual key’s lifecycle activity by vendor, while ensuring that encryption keys are available when and where needed, and are employed only by authenticated users. “Optica customers are demanding a highly secure and automated key management system as an alternative to expensive tape and hardware encryption upgrades. Putting the Optica Eclipz native mainframe tape encryption appliance alongside NeoScale’s CryptoStor Tape appliance, both managed by KeyVault, provides an easy-to-manage, standards-based storage security solution for major corporations with mainframe and other server environments,” said Optica Technologies CEO Greg Collins. “And because of our involvement in NeoScale’s key management solutions program, we are already jointly engaged with many customers.”

“As the leader in the enterprise data protection market, Symantec is committed to supporting a broad range of security solutions with NetBackup, ensuring that our customers can properly protect their data,” said Matt Kixmoeller, senior director, product management, for NetBackup. “Symantec is working with NeoScale and their CryptoStor solutions as part of their qualification in the Symantec Technology Enabled Program (STEP) and we expect to continue developing open standards and APIs for encryption of backup data.”

In addition to adding Optica and Symantec as API partners, NeoScale has combined forces with Entrust, the world’s most reliable PKI and authentication vendor. This partnership enables customers to leverage their investment in PKI infrastructure to secure access to the CryptoStor KeyVault appliance.

“Entrust is used as the standard method for authentication in many major worldwide enterprises, including 9 out of 10 of the top financial companies in the country,” said Eric Skinner, Vice President at Entrust. “Through the partnership with storage encryption expert, NeoScale, Entrust customers can now deploy standards-based storage security and key management while leveraging an Entrust authentication infrastructure, making customer deployment simpler and quicker.”

NeoScale’s Advanced Storage Security Key Management Architecture

The standards-based NeoScale trusted key management solution architecture uses an open client API to integrate encryption appliances, storage encryption devices, and the like from multiple vendors into common key management services such as auditing/reporting, key operations, and policy management. By integrating its solutions with multiple enterprise management solutions, such as PKI, audit, system log, ID management, and information lifecyle management, NeoScale is building a foundation to tailor its offerings for customers across the enterprise.

In addition NeoScale released a Java and Linux client API to its partners for integration testing and the company is actively working with many partners across the storage industry. NeoScale is aggressively working with Trusted Computing Group and other standards organizations to develop an open standard API for management of third-party keys. As the independent leader in storage security, NeoScale’s goal is to drive for quick adoption of a common standard to enable customers and vendors to adopt storage security solutions without worrying about being locked into a proprietary vendor-specific solution. Built upon its trusted CryptoStor KeyVault secure key management appliance, NeoScale’s key management solution architecture includes partners’ products that simplify the security requirements and management for heterogeneous data management environments. NeoScale is now shipping secure repository and API interfaces, making it the only vendor to provide customers with readily available, secure appliance and collaborative multi-vendor key management functions and solutions.

About NeoScale

Founded in June 2000, NeoScale Systems Inc. is the independent leader in storage security, enabling enterprise customers to achieve data privacy with the lowest operational impact and at the lowest total cost. The company’s award-winning CryptoStor® appliances automate key management and encryption of data that is either in flight over a storage network or at rest on disk, virtual tape, or tape media. NeoScale solutions have been certified by leading storage vendors and have been deployed worldwide by more than 100 customers including Global 500 companies, top financial institutions, healthcare organizations, government agencies, and a growing list of companies seeking to protect their organizational data. For more information, visit www.neoscale.com.

NeoScale, the NeoScale logo, CryptoStor, and CryptoStor KeyVault are trademarks or registered trademarks of NeoScale Systems Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other company and product names mentioned are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.