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In 1996 we were invited to attend a meeting in Switzerland with our Swiss reseller and a risk management company (founded by a group of Swiss banks). At that time our core business was the supply of tape subsystems, but we were invited to discuss a new security requirement they had identified.
They explained that they had major concerns about backup tapes being moved between two bank locations, one in Zurich and one in Basle. They had been using the two sites for Disaster Recover (DR), but after an incident, when the vehicle transporting the tapes was involved in an accident, they had determined there was a security concern. To remove this weakness they wished to encrypt all of their tapes that left any of their sites.
At that time there was a hardware tape encryption product available from an Irish company and we pointed this out to them. They explained that this was only suitable for narrow SCSI tapes, was specific to two backup products and in any case had just ceased production with no replacement planned!
On the flight back, we looked at the product portfolio, we presently had and realised we should be able to utilise the basic design from an emulation product, by adding encryption it would meet their requirements. This was the original design for what evolved into the Paranoia range of products.
After a number of years we came to realise that the original Paranoia needed updating and so the design of the Paranoia2 began. From feedback gained from the existing Paranoia customers, several features were added including unique dual interlaced encryption, overcoming the perceived weaknesses in DES, 3DES and extended DES but retaining the advantage of using standard encryption algorithms.
Enhancements and new interfaces followed over time and now the Paranoia2 is in use on four continents proving to be an extremely reliable and versatile product.
Eventually it was decided that a complete solution for customers needs was required and the SafeTape was born, which is the tape sub-system with built in dual interlaced encryption.
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