Michael Pacheco
Senior Product Marketing Manager, File Portfolio
October 23, 2025
As you wrap up Cybersecurity Awareness Month, take a moment to think about what defense and compliance really share; protecting data you can trust and proving it when it counts.
It’s also important to remember that if that data gets called into question, nobody cares what the slide deck says. They care what the system that stores it can prove.
That makes it essential to have data infrastructure that can back it up.
When Compliance Isn’t Optional, Proof Is Mandatory
Nobody calls the compliance team when things are calm. The calls come when risk shows up at the door.
It might be an SEC inquiry. It might be your legal team asking for records under lock. It might be a retention rule misfire that snowballs into full-on exposure.
No matter the trigger, the request is the same. ”Show us the evidence.” And that evidence better hold up to more than an internal policy. SEC Rule 17a-4(f), CFTC Rule 1.31(c)-(d), and FINRA Rule 4511(c) don’t care what your storage should do. They define what it must do: Retain electronic records in non-rewriteable and non-erasable format; enforce retention periods automatically; and maintain trustworthy audit logs.
When the rulebook is that specific, your data foundation must be that specific, too.
Rules You Know. Behaviors You Can’t Fake.
You can’t whiteboard your way through a retention audit.
You either have system-enforced compliance or a pile of risk dressed up as policy. These rules leave no room for interpretation. Write once, read many (WORM) must be enforced by the system. Audit logs need to stay untouched from the moment they’re created. Retention periods must trigger automatically and hold firm through their entire lifecycle.
So when the auditors show up, your data architecture needs to be as unflinching as the rules themselves.
VSP One File Delivers. Cohasset Backs It Up.
Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform One File (VSP One File) was assessed by Cohasset Associates, a firm that’s known and trusted across the financial services, energy, and government sectors for one reason: It doesn’t rubber stamp anything.
Its report confirms what data and legal teams in these organizations need to know. That VSP One File meets the letter of the law, with architecture that enforces compliance the moment data hits the file system.
That’s how VSP One File is built. Enforcement happens at the file system level, controlled by the system itself. No admin overrides. No privileged bypass. Once records are written, they’re locked, and the retention clock starts ticking.
Cohasset’s report confirms it: VSP One File enforces these behaviors automatically, by design, and without exceptions.
Locking Down Data Shouldn’t Mean Slowing Down Your Operations
Cohasset’s scope didn’t stop at WORM. They also reviewed how VSP One File balances enforcement with operational flexibility. And it passed on both fronts.
FIPS 140-2 certified encryption protects records in flight and at rest. Role-based access control (RBAC) and multifactor authentication (MFA) are enforced for privileged actions. Integrated tiering allows records to move securely to object storage or cloud without breaking retention integrity or chain-of-custody.
Most importantly, these aren’t bolted-on features. They’re engineered into the file system itself — the same file system that delivers high availability through global-active device (GAD) metro clustering and active-active file services.
Compliance shouldn’t be something you trade for performance. With VSP One File, you don’t have to.
Independent Validation. Enterprise Confidence.
If your data platform can’t stand up to Cohasset, it won’t stand up in court. Period.
The reasons are simple. Cohasset doesn’t echo vendor narratives. Its the organization regulators know and legal teams trust because it examines how platforms behave when rules are rigorous, and stakes are high. Its assessment of VSP One File confirms that WORM, immutability, and retention are enforced directly through the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform One (VSP One) architecture. And that behavior aligns with SEC, CFTC, and FINRA rules, with enforcement that holds without exception.
These controls are embedded at the file system level, where enforcement starts the moment records are written and holds firm through the entire retention lifecycle. There are no toggles, no workarounds, or gaps.
The same discipline that shapes VSP One File’s compliance validation anchors the full VSP One data foundation. It gives you a unified way to manage and secure data across file, block, and object, enforcing policies, maintaining control, and restoring confidence fast when everything’s on the line.
So when the regulator calls or your legal team needs the trail, your own team won’t be left searching for answers. With VSP One File, the evidence is already there, designed in, independently validated, and standing by.
Remember, confidence comes from knowing your data architecture has already answered the hard questions. So read the report and find out more about the platform designed to prove its case, before you’re asked to.
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Michael Pacheco is Senior Product Marketing Manager, File Portfolio , at Hitachi Vantara. Connect with Michael on LinkedIn .
