Companies can't get enough of good ol' tape storage for ransomware resistance

pcgamer.com:

Tape storage never went away for big data storage companies but you'd be forgiven for not being familiar with the tech as a PC gamer in 2022. We've since moved onto much, much faster technologies for our gaming PCs, the likes of NVMe SSDs. But tape isn't dead, far from it—it's actually been a record year for tape storage sales, reportedly spurred on by fear of cyber attack.

Tape is a pretty ancient storage technology by modern standards. There are magnetic tape-based storage systems going back to the first commercial PCs in the '50s. The ones we're chatting about today, Linear Tape-Open (LTO) came a little later than that, in the '90s. This is essentially an open standard for magnetic tape storage created by a cross-industry consortium, and manufactured today by the likes of HP Enterprise, IBM, and Quantum Corporation.

It's been a stellar year for LTO, too. According to an LTO sales report (via Sweclockers), using data from the companies responsible for manufacturing LTO tapes, 148 exabytes of total tape capacity was shipped in 2021. That's far more than 2020, where 105 exabytes was shipped, or the previous record year of 2019 with 114 exabytes of capacity.

The reason for the increase? It's chalked partially up to an increased threat of cybersecurity and malware, such as ransomware.

“We’re continuing to see organizations return to tape technology, seeking out storage solutions that offer high capacity, reliability, long term data archiving and stronger data protection measures, especially as threats to cybersecurity soar,” Patrick Osborne, GM and VP of HPE Storage, says.

So what makes tape storage so great against bad actors on the internet trying to make a quick buck? It comes down to something called an air-gap in