More Than Half Organizations Experience Data Loss After Disaster Event

Ensuring the recovery of critical information in the wake of a disaster remains a major obstacle for the majority of organizations, according to a recent survey by information management company Iron Mountain Incorporated.

Responses from 1,200 individuals responsible for protecting their organization’s data reveal a divide between disaster recovery awareness and action, and varying practices for how and when data is backed up.

When asked about their day-to-day data management
challenges and practices, respondents indicated that:

• Disaster looms large – Sixty-eight percent chose disaster recovery as their biggest data challenge;
• When disaster strikes, not everything makes it back – Only 44 percent successfully recovered their information after a recent data recovery event, largely because it either took too long to recover (27 percent) or they did not have necessary files backed up (15 percent);
• Half keep it on, others take it off – Less than half (48 percent) of respondents keep their data offsite (either backing it up to a remote data center or a tape-storage facility) in the event of a disaster, while an equal number back it up on site, exposing it to potential loss;
• "Keep everything" strategy prevails – When it comes to knowing what to keep and what to destroy, a key best practice for compliant data management, one-quarter (25 percent) keep all information, while only 17 percent have a formal, company-wide retention and destruction policy;
• Cloud popular with smaller companies with less data – Only 20 percent of organizations surveyed rely on cloud technology, and companies with more 1,000 employees and/or more than 25TB of data were less likely to consider backing up to the cloud.

"The amount of information an organization has to manage is growing at an incredible pace, creating new data challenges every day," said Blaine Rigler, senior vice president and general manager, Data Backup and Recovery, Iron Mountain. "At its basic level, controlling data is about controlling risk, which means being prepared in the event of disaster so that you can restore your business without losing its most important asset – information. This survey shows us that organizations are still struggling to effectively manage and ensure recovery and data access. The right data practices will help deliver peace of mind, while ensuring you can reduce costs, protect your organization from unnecessary legal risks and increase overall confidence in your backup processes."
 
In response to these findings, Iron Mountain offers
the following tips to help better manage data
and improve disaster recovery practices:

• When data grows, adapt and overcome – Consider the impact of information growth on the performance of backup and recovery processes. Companies of all sizes should make sure key policies for data retention and destruction can be adapted to help reduce data management vulnerabilities brought on by growth.
• Keep what you need, destroy what you don’t – Think strategically about retention policies. By keeping only the information you need and destroying what you don’t, the amount of data you have to back up shrinks and processes run more efficiently.
• Enforce the rules so everyone knows – Develop a records retention and destruction policy that is applied across all business units and addresses all records, regardless of media, and update it every 12 to 18 months to reflect changes in regulations, industry and the business.
• Treat backup data as a record – Backup data is discoverable in a court of law, as it may contain sensitive information governed by privacy laws and should be considered a record and managed in accordance with retention schedules.
• When in doubt, move it out – If you’re unsure that you’re prepared for the unpredictability – and inevitability – of data loss from a disaster, moving data offsite is a key step in ensuring that your critical information is protected and can be available when you need it most.