Articles
Scary Facts About Data Loss
Ask business owners what their top assets are and you'll hear a number of responses ranging from the products or services they sell, to their employees or their customers. One asset that seldom gets top billing, but that few can deny its importance, is DATA. Data consists of any information stored on a server, desktop PC, or laptop. It includes such important items as a company's financials, inventory lists, client contact information, and email; and might even contain social security and credit card numbers. But what if one morning it were all gone, vanished into thin air? Would you believe it? More importantly, would you survive it? Believe it or not, it happens, and when it does, it's SCARY...
The Wall Street Journal - May 1, 2007
JP Morgan Chase has alerted thousands of its Chicago-area millionaire clients, as well as some of its own employees, that it cannot locate a computer tape containing their account information and Social Security numbers.
The tape, which was in a locked container, was being transported from a bank location to an off-site facility last month when it went astray, a JP Morgan spokesman said. It is not clear if the tape arrived at its destination or was lost along the way. Some 47,000 accounts were affected.
In February 2005, Bank of America reported losing tapes containing over 1.2 million customers' data. Four months later, Citigroup had 3.9 million customers' data lost in a tape shipment. In December of that same year, Marriot lost over 200,000 of their time-share customers' data. In all, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center, in 2005, there were at least 134 data breaches affecting more than 57 million people.
If these large companies can misplace or have client data stolen, what about the small business owner who's wearing ALL the hats in a company and barely has time to kiss his/her spouse good night, much less baby sit every tape or hard drive?
How about the other ghouls and goblins out to get your data? Natural disasters such as flooding, fires, and high winds are common place in many parts of the country. If using a tape backup unit, where do those tapes reside? In a drawer at the office? On top of the server itself? Even with a steady rotation of tapes, being transported offsite by men armed with wooden stakes and silver bullets, how does anyone know that the tape actually contains data or that the data it does contain is any good?
According to The Gartner Group, 34% of companies fail to test their tape backups, and of those that do, 77% have found tape back-up failures.
Personally, in the last five years, I know of at least a dozen businesses affected by the antiquated technology of tape / tape backup units.
Now that the suspense has built and everyone reading is shaking in fear, here is the real horror of data loss... it can also mean the loss of your business...
93% of companies that lost their data for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster.
(National Archives & Records Administration in Washington)
50% of businesses that found themselves without their data for this same time period filed for bankruptcy immediately.
(National Archives & Records Administration in Washington)
Frightening, isn't it? Like with most horror movies, there is a solution to all of this...only it doesn't include garlic, silver bullets, and wooden stakes. Using the highest level of encryption, safe and secure data can be backed up automatically and stored on hard drives, located outside of your business and automatically replicated to an additional location.
CoreVault Inc. provides this world class data backup and recovery service at very competitive rates. No other product/service is more reliable for crucial security, storage and monitoring of even the most complex and intricate business data systems.
Whatever the size of your company, if you've been in business for any amount of time, you have most likely encountered the high cost and down-time of a tape back-up failure. Whether caused by technical error (Dr. Jekyll) or human error (Mr. Hyde), no spell or voodoo curse was capable of restoring your lost or corrupted data. It's time to implement the RIGHT solution. To find out more about CoreVault, such as pricing and how it works, call Chris Holder with H I T Solutions at 832-978-6336.
