Quantum's technology will appeal to any IT manager concerned about digital tapes falling off delivery trucks, said Jon Oltsik, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Inc. in Milford, Mass.

But many companies haven't invested in storage security. In a recent survey of IT managers at more than 300 companies by Framingham, Mass.-based GlassHouse Technologies Inc., 54 percent of the respondents said they have no documented procedures for protecting stored data, 85 percent said they don't encrypt their backup data, and 70 percent rated their data storage security as only fair or poor.

Bill Dedi, senior systems administrator at Tellabs Inc., a US$1.2 billion network systems manufacturer in Naperville, Ill., said storage security is a priority in his mind, but business executives haven't provided any funding for such technologies yet. "Securitywise, we don't have much in place," he said.

Dedi's IT group supports 200 Windows-based servers that are backed up to a virtual tape library, which then archives the data to a Quantum PX720 tape library using DLT320 tape drives. Dedi said he normally backs up about 14TB of data weekly.

While he may not be ready to upgrade to Quantum's upcoming encryption technology, Dedi said he does plan to use the DLTSage Tape Security upgrade. He said that, currently, there's a vulnerability because any drive can read any tape, but with the electronic key, "you're not going to be able to do that."