The company KEIHIN Sales and Development Europe GmbH uses Buffalo NAS to connect three separate offices, and to ensure data can be processed securely and under encryption to protect it from unauthorized access.

KEIHIN Sales and Development Europe GmbH

Keihin Seiki Manufacturing, the predecessor to today’s Keihin Corporation, was founded in 1956 in Kawasaki, Japan. With more than 22,000 employees worldwide, the company aimed to develop more efficient components, primarily for automobiles and motorbikes, by investing in new technologies and research.

The subsidiary in Germany was founded in 2007 as Keihin Sales and Development Europe GmbH, hereinafter referred to as “KSE,” and now has three offices, two of which are in Ismaning and one in Wolfsburg.

Customers include renowned Japanese manufacturers, such as Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Suzuki, and Yamaha, as well as many international heavyweights, among them Daimler, Ford, Volkswagen Group, KTM AG, Piaggio, and Triumph.

The Challenge

KSE processes data in three locations with an additional windows file server acting as a domain controller, and a Cloud service with Active Directory.

The company data is stored locally on a windows file server and also on a separate Cloud service. Sensitive data is given additional protection using encryption software – not least to ensure that employee data is stored securely and in accordance with the GDPR.

Although it is possible to store data in the Cloud, many employees still prefer to work with the local server, as it is often quicker and easier to use. The company had settled into this setup until one of the servers with the domain controller broke down, providing an incentive for implementing a new and better solution.

The Solution

In each of the three offices in Germany, KSE has a Buffalo TeraStation 5410DN with  8 terabytes of hard-drive storage space for local data storage. These are all connected via a virtual private network (VPN). The hard drive arrays are arranged in a RAID 5 array, which ensures a good compromise with regard to redundancy, transfer rate, and memory. As an additional failover solution, every night an incremental backup of the two other network memories is saved on each of the three NAS in the VPN. The equipment is kept in a locked room in order to secure the data against theft and to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The Buffalo TeraStation 5410 also supports standard 256-bit AES encryption, which makes third-party software for the encryption of sensitive data redundant and which played an important role in helping KSE decide which solution
to choose. Even if unauthorized users gain physical access to the hard drives, the data saved there cannot be read by other devices.

Buffalo offers an intuitive admin interface for assigning user access rights, ensuring that employees are granted access to the data they need.

Instead of the Cloud solution, KSE is currently using a local storage solution that ensures the company has full control over its own data.

However, if they should ever return to using a Cloud service, the TeraStation 5410DN has the option of introducing a Hybrid Cloud. In this case, all or selected data can be automatically synchronized with user accounts in Microsoft Azure, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, or Amazon S3.

The NAS devices are currently on a 1 GbE network environment, although the TeraStation supports 10 GbE integration and also for bundling two 1 GbE strands. KSE is waiving this option at the moment, as most employees are currently connected via WLAN and do not need higher data rates, but the network is future-proofed for additional expansion.

Benefits for the Company

Secure File Transfers and Storage

The TS5410DN supports automatic AES 256-bit encryption. In case of theft, the hard drives cannot be read – not even on other TeraStations. The TS5410DN also supports HTTPS for encrypted data access and SFTP to protect data transfers between host computers. With these security standards in place, the company had no need to purchase any third-party security software. Buffalo has also partnered with Trend Micro to provide a comprehensive antivirus software package. If infected files are accidentally transferred to the NAS, the antivirus immediately detects them and promptly removes or quarantines the affected files (depending on the settings) to prevent the malware from spreading to the system. With these safeguards in place, the TS5410DN allows sensitive, personal data to be safely stored in full compliance with GDPR while protecting the company against cyberattacks and industrial espionage. Buffalo TeraStation NAS devices are TAA compliant and Made in Japan.

Cost Savings and Flexibility

The cost calculations carried out by KSE showed that, among other benefits, investing in Buffalo NAS results in lower costs as a storage solution in the long term. Cloud services usually incur license and subscription fees, depending on the volume of data being accessed. Moreover, there is no way to accurately budget bandwidth costs for unexpected situations. By retaining full control of their data infrastructure, the company can easily manage their resources by adjusting the environment to meet their needs. And should the company need storage expansion in the future, the TS5410DN supports both cloud integration and 10 GbE networking, so the company can easily incorporate additional storage options without disrupting or replacing their current storage network.

Three-Year Warranty and Data Recovery Services

For the TeraStation 5410DN used by KSE, Buffalo offers a three-year warranty. This device also qualifies for Buffalo's free Data Recover Service for simple logical failures when registered.