Offsite electronic storage should be accountants' first choice in backup systems.
by Rick Telberg
for HP
With most businesses now extremely or entirely dependent on their computer-based information systems, electronic data vaulting systems have become as important to operational futures as banks are to their financial fortunes.
Vaulting service providers operate from their business and individual customers' own bandwidths to back up their server-based and computer-based data and e-mail or upload files to secure vault centers, where systems and personnel dedicated to data security monitor, mirror and constantly back up the files to disc.
Users can access their data anytime including, most importantly, when their local IT systems are unavailable due to technical malfunctions or emergencies. Data is transferred from user to vault via highly secure private online networks that enable files to be transferred, stored and backed up just minutes after they are created.
By contrast, companies that back up only periodically or at the end of the day risk losing any data lost due to a system breakdown or break-in between back-ups. In addition to insulating data from problems the businesses' may incur on-site, vaulting also eliminates the expenses for additional hardware, software, tape media and manpower required for on-site backup and the annoying downtime that onsite backup can create.
For businesses with multiple locations, vaulting provides uniform and more secure back-up of data from multiple department servers, desktop computers and laptops. Web-based vaulting has been around since the early 1990s but began attracting more attention after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in which the parent companies of many of the World Trade Center-located business operations destroyed also lost those operations data, which was stored on nearby servers.
Demand increased in 2002 with passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act accounting reform law that makes public company CEOs and CFOs personally responsible for the integrity of their companies' financial data. Fueling future vaulting demand are the exponential growth of financial records, with some businesses seeing their volume of data grow 40 percent or more a year, and no end in sight to the natural catastrophes and manmade computer viruses, works and hacking attacks threatening electronic data everywhere.
At the same time, businesses remain naïve about how to safeguard their data.
Noting that 53 percent of organizations either don't have a backup strategy at all, or leave it up to individual users to back up to a network drive, IDC says corporations are "in a very vulnerable position, without protection for the majority of their data."
With many vaulting services now available and more in the pipeline, businesses should choose wisely.
For starters, look for a provider with a good reputation for service and high-quality products and is financially strong enough to remain in business for years to come. Your data is only as secure as the vault where it's stored.
Along the same lines, businesses should look for a vaulting company that can advise them on their overall IT security strategies The level of security in the connection between the customer and provider's vault, as well as the physical security of the vault itself are also paramount.
Systems with advanced data encryption and digital signature policies for data transfer and ones whose vault centers are protected from natural disasters and power outages are preferred.
