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Do Not Take Data Recovery for Granted

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We have discussed many reasons for data loss in the last several blogs. However, you can also lose  data by taking recovery for granted. This applies to all of those reasons for data loss. This one is pretty simple – simply assuming recovery will work.

Your Other Choice

You remember the age-old saying concerning what happens when we assume. It is particularly apt when discussing data recovery. Don’t assume anything!

Regardless of the technology that you use, it’s important that you periodically test your recovery. Don’t assume because you can write to tape that you can read from that tape. Don’t assume because a dashboard shows you a successful backup status that you can recover that backup. Be paranoid and test.

And then test again.

For more information on data loss and recovery, contact NPV.

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Losing Your Data from Computer Disasters

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Shortcut to Losing Your Data

Disasters are not a leading cause of data loss by any means. Data loss due to disasters occurs no more than 1% to 3% of the time. In order to avoid losing data, do not focus on the relative rarity of disasters and ignore the severe consequences when a disaster strikes.

What to do to avoid data loss from disasters

Why don’t people walk around outside in thunderstorms? The odds of getting struck by lightning are pretty low. The estimated odds in any given year are 1 in 500,000. Why? Because the consequences of being struck by lightning are very high. The odds of death are 1 in 10; the odds of disability approach 9 in 10.

The odds of data loss due to a natural disaster are relatively low; however, the consequences are severe. In order to safeguard your data, you need to have a disaster recovery plan for your environment. A major part of that disaster recovery plan is protecting data.

There are two basic schemes for this: tape-based rotational archiving and electronic-based replication of data to an off-premise site. We advise looking an integrated D2D2x approach whereby you can use disk, tape, or electronic replication concurrently to optimize your overall spending in support of true disaster recovery.

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Data Loss Through Theft

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Theft is another cause of data loss. Theft manifests itself either via a “data spill” in which data isn’t lost but instead made available to third-parties for whom the data wasn’t intended or in outright destruction. For the purposes of this blog, we’re going to limit our discussion to outright destruction of data.

 

The destruction of data is rarely performed by a relatively disinterested “hacker”; instead, it is most often performed by a disgruntled employee or ex-employee. It is incredibly difficult to prevent; although precautions should be and most often are taken particularly around the involuntary termination of employees.

 

Taking Another Path

 

The first step to avoid malicious destruction is to create policies which make your primary data more difficult to destroy. These include strict policies and procedures associated with not only involuntary but voluntary termination as well and on taking steps to secure your environment from external access.

 

From the perspective of data protection, theft is largely indistinguishable from human error in terms of the tools and techniques that must be used to protect your data – the only difference between the two is motive and motive isn’t really a factor in terms of this type of logical failure. Automation and retention again are the most important strategies for ensuring that you can survive this type of threat.

 

For more information on protecting your business from theft of data, contact NPV.com.

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Disregarding Software Corruption Leads you to Lose Data

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Shortcut to Losing Your Data

Software corruption is the third leading cause of data loss. Anyone who has lived through a BSoD (Blue Screen of Death) in Windows understands the concept. Of course, software corruption is caused not only by software defects but through the chaining of errors in systems as well. It’s important to ignore software corruption in order to increase your odds of losing your data.

Taking Another Path

Software corruption, like human error, is another type of logical (as opposed to physical, or hardware) failure. The primary differentiation with respect to data loss is that software corruption can occur and remain undetected for days, weeks, months, or years. Thus automation for strict adherence to policy and retention are incredibly important techniques for protecting your data against software corruption.

If you are experiencing software corruption, contact NPV.com.

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Follow Policy to Avoid Data Loss

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Human Error is a Shortcut to Losing Your Data

Human error is the second leading cause of data loss. Human error ranges from accidental deletion of files and records to ignoring policies regarding data to rebooting systems without proper shutdown procedures. Blind belief and trust in your fellow coworkers to not only follow policy but to not make any mistakes at all are fundamental to using this shortcut to its fullest potential in losing your data.

Avoid Losing Data Through Human Error

There are two fundamental reasons for human error: ignorance and arrogance. Attempting to change human nature is the height of arrogance. People have a tendency to be incredibly poor at following policy. Thus specifying that all “important” data will be stored only on centralized corporate servers and storage tends to fail as soon as a C-level executive loses the data on their notebook. But even when people try their best to follow policy, accidents such as file and record deletion will occur. The best defenses against human error are automation and retention. Automation allows policies and procedures to be created and automatically executed. Retention allows recovery of data even when the data loss isn’t noticed for some period of time.

Retention is one of the fundamental differentiations between backup and simple high availability (which is typically achieved with some type of replication) – high availability handles hardware failure well but does a poor job of handling logical failures such as those caused by human error – because logical failure is simply replicated in highly available systems. Of course, protecting against hardware failure using high availability and against all types of failure using backup is a common technique for protecting data and systems.

Previously, we described why D2D is such an important component of protecting your system. When we discuss any type of logical failure, including human error, another important concept is to protect your data using a superset of D2D which is called D2D2x (Disk-to-Disk-to-Any.) D2D2x simply means that you have longer-term strategies for backups to either on-premise rotational archiving media (disk or tape – although tape has the risks we’ve discussed previously) or to a private or public cloud.

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What Causes Data Loss?

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In order to understand shortcuts to losing your data, the first thing we need to do is understand the most common reasons that data is lost.

The primary causes of data loss are:

  • Human failure
  • Human error
  • Software corruption
  • Theft
  • Computer viruses
  • Hardware destruction

The results of the two best studies regarding data loss in the real world are depicted as follows:

Root Cause and the Incident %

Hardware failure – 40%

Human error – 29%

Software corruption  – 13%

Theft – 9%

Computer viruses – 6%

Hardware destruction  -3%

 

Root Cause vs Customer Perception vs Actual Incident %

Hardware or system problem – Customer Perception is 78%, Actual Incident percentage is 56%

Human error – Customer Perception is 11%, Actual Incident percentage is 26%

Software corruption- Customer Perception is 7%, Actual Incident percentage is 9%

Computer viruses – Customer Perception is 2%, Actual Incident percentage is 4%

Natural disasters –  Customer Perception is 1%, Actual Incident percentage is 2%

 

Each of these together forms the foundation for our advice on the most effective path for you to lose

your data. For assistance with data loss, or for help in preventing data loss, contact NPV.com.

 

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Backup Data Services and Statistics

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No one wants to lose data.  The consequences of data loss are dire; below is a sampling of just a few statistics related to the impact of data loss on business.  Did you know?

  • 93% of companies that lost their data center for 10 days or more due to a disaster, filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster. 50% of businesses that found themselves without data management for this same time period filed for bankruptcy immediately. (National Archives & Records Administration in Washington)
  • 94% of companies suffering from a catastrophic data loss do not survive – 43% never reopen and 51% close within two years. (University of Texas)
  • 30% of all businesses that have a major fire go out of business within a year and 70% fail within five years. (Home Office Computing Magazine)
  • 77% of those companies who do test their tape backups found back-up failures. (Boston Computing Network, Data Loss Statistics)
  • 7 out of 10 small firms that experience a major data loss go out of business within a year. (DTI/Price Waterhouse Coopers)
  • 96% of all business workstations are not being backed up. (Contingency Planning and Strategic Research Corporation)
  • 50% of all tape backups fail to restore. (Gartner)
  • 25% of all PC users suffer from data loss each year (Gartner)

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