Components Based Key Management Algorithm for Storage Area Networks

Data sharing and file distributions are the two primary functions of network attached storages. Fibre Channel based Storage Area Networks (FC-SAN) has become a more popular solution for the enterprise storage requirements and provides high speed data transfer with high availability, scalability and reliable storage solutions. As SAN keeps and shares entire organizations critical information, it is considered to be more vulnerable to the attackers who gain a single point of access. In most of the data sharing operations among network users, uses encrypted data transfer with proper key management. Securing the SAN data with public key algorithm like RSA is the least less discussed topic and generating keys is a difficult task in distributed environment like Storage Area networks. SAN, considered to be a heterogeneous network, needs distributed key management for the scalability which is one of the important advantages of using SAN. This research paper explores the deployment of RSA algorithm with component based key generation without a key server. This paper also uses compression algorithm ALDC to compress the data during transmission for faster data transfer. The SAN performance was analyzed after the implementation RSA and ALDC algorithm in a customized testing SAN scenario and throughput analysis done for the effectiveness of cryptographic key management.