Thousands 
of IT execs gathered in Orlando, Florida in late October to attend the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo for answers to key issues to refine their storage strategies and to explore innovative technologies that could help achieve their objectives. The LTO team was also in attendance discussing benefits and solutions offered by LTO-8 technology. This BlogBytes will review key components of the conference and provide the answers attendees received at the LTO stand.
Key Components
One important aspect of being a leader is the ability to effectively communicate the organization’s objectives and strategies. The conference offered a number of sessions to help fine tune this skill with topics ranging from “How Do I Create and Communicate a Compelling Strategy?” to “Leadership in a Digital Society.” Numerous technology topics were also discussed including artificial intelligence, emerging and disruptive technologies as well as security, risk and compliance.
LTO Team Talks Air-Gap Security
When it came to learning more about securing sensitive information, 
complying with internal and external regulations and reducing the risk of cyber-attacks, the LTO team was quick to respond with helpful answers. The LTO team explained to attending IT executives that it is important to have a multi-pronged security defense plan that includes employee education and safeguards, as well as processes and technology to secure sensitive information in their backup tier.
At the LTO booth, Laura Loredo, LTO program representative, explained to attendees (Figure-1) how LTO technology can help protect data against malware and cyber-attacks, “LTO tape is inherently offline. That is, when a tape cartridge is stored it is detached from the system preventing access by program bots, malicious software, system hiccups, and especially hackers and ransomware.” Loredo emphasized, “If a natural disaster or a cyber-attack were to occur that compromised an organization’s data, the offline LTO tape could be used to restore the information.” LTO technology also supports Write Once Read Many (WORM) storage to help address information compliance and regulations, and even supports data encryption. You can learn more about LTO data security here.
LTO-8 Facts
The LTO Team was also asked a lot of questions regarding the ultimate technology for data protection – LTO Generation-8. Here’s what they said in a nutshell:
- Fast: LTO-8 technology has up to a 750 MB/s data transfer rate which is up to 2.7 TB per hour of backup performance per drive.
- High Capacity: Up to 30 TB per cartridge can help reduce storage costs. One LTO-8 cartridge can hold the data of up to four LTO-6 cartridges.
- Low Cost: LTO compliant tape is very inexpensive and has been shown to be much lower cost than an all-disk or cloud solution.
- Ease of Use: The Linear Tape File System (LTFS) makes tape easier to use than ever before enabling the quick search and query of data.
- Solid Roadmap: Future generations are expected to store up to 480TBs helping to keep pace with growing storage needs.
The LTO team came to the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo to provide answers on the use of tape technology for the security and protection of their data in a cost-efficient manner. You can learn more about LTO technology in this short video.