You can’t gamble when it comes to protecting your firm’s data. Most firm’s implement the standard security measures to protect against intruders. They also perform regular backup of data so they are prepared in case of system failures, virus attacks or natural disasters. Unfortunately, many companies still rely on tape backups as their primary backup media.
The questions all of us in business must ask about our computer data is, can we really afford to take disaster recovery risks with our data? “Data is one of two irreplaceable business assets, second only to loss of life,” writes Dennis Wenk in an article in the Disaster Recovery Journal (Winter 2004, “Is ‘Good Enough’ Storage Good Enough for Compliance?”). While comparing data loss to the loss of life might seem outrageous, the article goes on to state, “Research has shown that 50 percent of companies that lose critical systems for more than 10 days never recover, 43 percent of companies experiencing a disaster never reopen, and 29 percent of the remaining close within two years. That’s the death of a corporation.”
Tape backups which were the standard for so many companies, have now been replaced by a number of more reliable, cost effective technologies. Computerworld listed tape backup as one of five submerging technologies, stating that “Although magnetic tape’s cost per megabyte will give it a role in keeping archival records for years to come, better technologies and techniques are eroding tape’s dominance for day-to-day backup and recovery tasks” (October 20, 2003, “Submerging Technologies: Five that are Sinking Fast” by Gary H. Anthes and Robert L. Mitchell). Note that this article was published in 2003 and some companies are still using tape as their primary backup media. These firms represent a disaster waiting to happen and unfortunately for them and their employees it is only a matter of time.
If you would like more information about protecting your back-ups please see our website at www.westecservices.net
Tags: data backup
