Richards & Richards

When physicists throw the “on” switch on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), between three and six gigabytes of data spew out of it every second. That is, admittedly, an extreme example. But the flow of data from smaller sources than CERN, the European particle-research organization outside Geneva that runs the LHC, is also growing inexorably. At the moment it is doubling every two years. These data need to be stored. And that need for mass storage is reviving a technology which, only a few years ago, seemed destined for the scrapheap: magnetic tape.

Alberto Pace, head of data and storage at CERN, says that tape has four advantages over hard disks for the long-term preservation of data.

The first is speed. Although it takes about 40 seconds for an archive robot to select the right tape and put it in a reader, once it has loaded, extracting data from that tape is about four times as fast as reading from a hard disk.

The second advantage is reliability. When a tape snaps, it can be spliced back together. The loss is rarely more than a few hundred megabytes—a bagatelle in information-technology circles. When a terabyte hard disk fails, by contrast, the result is usually that all the data on it is lost.

The third benefit of tapes is that they do not need power to preserve data held on them. Stopping a disk rotating by temporarily turning off the juice—a process called power cycling—increases the likelihood that it will fail.

The fourth benefit is security. If a hacker with a grudge managed to break into CERN’s data center, he could delete all 50 petabytes of the disk-held data in minutes. To delete the same amount from the organization’s tapes would take years.

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What should you use to store safely and securely your data off-site?  Is tape still the best?  Or should you look at cloud computing?

How do you know?  Ask Us! We can help.

Regardless of whether customer and employee data is legally protected in your country or industry, we all have an ethical obligation to protect others' personal information as well as our own organizations' proprietary information. Doing otherwise is an open invitation for that information to be used in malicious ways ranging from identity theft to corporate espionage. At the very least, it's simply common courtesy to protect others' privacy!
 
Even in companies with elaborate data-protection systems, here are three sources of electronic data breaches that I see all the time:

•    The most common breach has perhaps always been – and will perhaps always be – computer monitors left on and exposed so that passers-by can read the screen. (Plus, if that machine is 'live' and unattended, what's to stop someone from using it to forage for still more information?). Have a reasonable and enforceable policy to prevent each of these things from happening.

•    Redeploying computers. Most companies seem to be getting better about removing hard drives from old computers they are trashing or selling off. But what about redeploying computers to new parts of your business, though? Get that data off the machine before it goes where it ought not be going!

•    People change their electronic technology more often than their underwear these days and all those machines and gadgets are a huge source of potential data breaches. Things like copy machines and fax machines are prone to have a ton of data on them that needs to be protected. Be sure that their memories are wiped clean before you get rid of them.

Like with so many things ethical, electronic data security is often seen as someone else's job. Also like so many things ethical, however, we have not fulfilled our ethical obligation if we don't do everything in our power to assure that the proper thing is being done. If you see any of these potential data breaches occurring in your company, make it a point to bring the problem to whomever has the authority to correct the problem.

Any firm that handles personal information will be subject to the rule, except those that work under HIPAA–the federal health privacy law–and some financial institutions.  Click here for the whole article >>>

There are a number of items that need to be attended to with your records management on a regular basis.  Two that affect your security and compliance are your Security List and your Retention Schedule.

Please contact us for a current list and form to update it here>>>

Contact us for a report on what you have in storage that should be destroyed >>>

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