Secure Alliance

Network Appliance Inc. last week acquired storage security vendor Decru Inc. for $272 million, cementing a relationship begun last year when the companies developed data-security systems for investment banking, health care, and the federal government.

Earlier this month, the companies launched CardVault, technology for complying with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, which requires merchants and payment processors to render sensitive cardholder data unreadable wherever it's stored. In recent months, retailers such as Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. and DSW Shoe Warehouse have reported breaches involving losses or theft of cardholder data.

Decru's DataFort appliance encrypts information residing within a data center. Residing on a storage area network or network-attached storage device, it combines hardware-based encryption and software-based key management to encrypt inbound data for disk and tape devices and decrypt outbound data.