Centralized data protection plans high priority for IT.

By Jennifer deJong

April 15, 2008 —  (Page 1 of 4)
Until the data center at headquarters started asking for them, no one at the regional sales office even knew they were missing. Now all 10 staffers are scrambling to lay their hands on the backup tapes believed to contain sensitive data, including customer social security numbers. Are they in that stack sitting on the receptionist’s desk, waiting to be shipped off site to storage? Or maybe the tapes went out with the last batch—and fell off the truck?

Employees at small, remote offices without local IT staff hate to admit their data protection approach is that haphazard. But storage experts say the missing tape scenario and chaos that surrounds it isn’t at all far-fetched. Lacking clear direction from corporate IT, remote offices don’t know how to protect data properly, said Gail Greener, a senior director of product management for storage solution provider EMC, and many still rely on older technologies likes tape backup. “The receptionist is dealing with the tapes, stacking them, shipping them.” Most small sites make some effort around backup and data retention, but such efforts are typically error prone and inconsistent, the experts said.

“Often, corporate [IT administrators] don’t know if backups are even being run [at remote sites],” said Forrester analyst Stephanie Balaouras. A company may follow a rigorous data protection plan at headquarters, added Steve Rodin, president of Storagepipe, a Web-based provider of backup and recovery software. “But the plan doesn’t extend to remote offices.”

At many organizations, the haphazard approach to remote storage is beginning to change, chiefly in response to federal regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley, which, among other things, forces public companies to retain e-mail and other records that document key business activities. To ensure compliance with this other mandates, top executives are demanding corporate IT shops develop formal data protection policies and apply them across the enterprise—including remote sites. For a long time, there wasn’t wide enough recognition of this risk, and that was a real weakness in IT strategies, said Balaouras. “But now regulatory compliance is having a big impact.”

Related Search Term(s): Missing Tapes, Chaos Rule, Remote Sites

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