Non-volatile memory and disks: Avenues for policy architectures

As computing models change, so too do the demands on storage. Distributed and virtualized systems introduce new vulnerabilities, assumptions, and performance requirements on disks. However, traditional storage systems have very limited capacity to implement needed "advanced storage" features such as integrity and data isolation. This is largely due to the simple interfaces and limited computing resources provided by commodity hard-drives. A new generation of storage devices affords better opportunities to meet these new models, but little is known about how to exploit them. In this paper, we show that the recently introduced fast-access non-volatile RAM-enhanced hybrid (HHD) disk architectures can be used to implement a range of valuable storage-security services. We specifically discuss the use of these new architectures to provide data integrity, capability-based access control, and labeled information flow at the disk access layer. In this, we introduce systems that place a security perimeter at the disk interface - and deal with the parent operating system only as a largely untrusted entity.