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Beyond inevitability

Editorial Type: Opinion     Date: 07-2014    Views: 2517   





Paul Le Messurier, Programme and Operations manager at Kroll Ontrack takes us back to storage basics, explaining how to protect data from hardware failure and organisations from disaster.

Technology may be getting smarter but our reliance on modern interconnected systems means that problems caused by hardware failure can have a disastrous effect on business continuity. With the increased use of mobiles and tablets and cloud storage innovations, traditional disaster recovery strategies are out of step.

Recent research amongst 1,066 of our customers showed that over a quarter of respondents suffered business continuity issues because of data loss. The average cost of this is over £2 million per year so limiting the impact of faulty hardware is important.

The complexity and remote location of technology means that businesses must plan to be able to respond to hardware failures quickly and effectively: in other words, a solid disaster recovery plan. The plan at minimum must firstly prevent, continuously monitor for, and finally resolve issues caused by faulty hardware.

More than one in three businesses fails to run regular backups. The dangers are highlighted when our survey says that 66 per cent of data loss scenarios are caused by hardware failure. Organisations must implement backup schedules and those that have already taken this step should conduct a full audit of their current backup processes, verifying that backups are timely, complete and verified. Don't forget planning for the storage space required.

One in seven data loss scenarios are due to human error, for example, not connecting to the network regularly or accidental deletion of virtual files and servers. This is a serious issue as it means that even companies that design the safest data centres with mirrored server room's miles apart could actually come to a grinding halt should an administrator accidently delete some crucial data.

Staff must be educated on the implications of data loss. Businesses dealing with data stored and accessed across many devices and locations must train staff on the correct use of company data as well as backup procedures. However, the best way to prevent data loss from staff is to remove as much responsibility from them as possible and put the onus on the technology through automatic backups, a permissions structure and monitoring systems.

Data that is vital to operations should be protected by detection systems to monitor for tampering, the health of disks and backup/restore errors. The quicker an error or fault can be spotted in an IT system, the lower the risk of data loss.

The one thing to bear in mind is that hardware has a lifespan and regardless of type, it will eventually fail. When disaster strikes, non-technical staff should have access to the system temporarily removed. In the complex corporate environment where there are many volumes and layers of data storage to consider and work through, amateur data recovery can exacerbate issues. Users can actually end up deleting or corrupting information permanently by using the wrong tools and techniques.

Disaster recovery plans must include access to a data recovery expert. This should not be left until disaster strikes as speed is of the essence. Our research has revealed that 50 per cent of businesses whose data isn't restored in ten days go bust within five years.

Diligence and strategy are required to ensure that the chosen data loss disaster plan is effective and that any plan in place is up to date and relevant. Disaster will inevitably strike, and the most organisations can do is to implement a disaster recovery plan and continuously evaluate it through strenuous testing. Importantly, IT administrators must study downtime (how long after a disaster strikes does it takes to switch to a back-up), opportunities for human error (how stringent the system permissions are), and opportunities for data breaches (how often are passwords changed?). The inevitable needn't happen.

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