Storagepipe's Blog

What does 12,000 laptops look like?

editor@channelweb.com — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:00:38 GMT

Dell has just released a report that was conducted in partnership with the Ponemon institute, and it reveals some shocking figures. According to the report, 12,000 laptops are lost or stolen from US airports every week. If you’d like to read the full report, I’ve provided a direct link for you.

Of course, 12,000 can seem like an obscure number of laptops. So let’s put this into perspective.

Let’s assume that you had obtained your first real adult “office job” on your eighteenth birthday. At this rate, you could lose one laptop every single day, five days per week, and fifty weeks per year - and still not use up 12,000 laptops by the time you retire on your sixty-fifth birthday.

That’s a lot of data loss. What’s even more shocking is that 42% of those surveyed stated that they didn’t have any measures in place to adequately back up their laptop data.

For VARs and resellers looking to get a foot in the door, this presents an interesting opportunity. Given that laptops are so convenient and inexpensive, they are quickly making old-fashioned desktop systems seem obsolete.

As a result of this growing trend, businesses are now looking for cost effective ways to manage growing numbers of laptops which may be mobile, or at remote locations.

Many companies today are offering online backup solutions with centralized management portals that simplify the administration of multiple remote or mobile laptops. By adding a service like this to their portfolio, VARs can positively differentiate themselves from the competition and get a foot in the door when approaching new clients.

If you haven’t thought of adding online backup to your services portfolio, you now have 12,000 reasons why you should start.

About Storagepipe Solutions:

Since 2001, we’ve been a leader in data protection industry, offering online backup and email archiving for companies of all sizes. Today, we offer several reseller and partner programs that allow VARs to provide co-branded and white label online backup solutions to their customers.

$50K – The Cost of a Lost Backup Tape

editor@channelweb.com — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:18:07 GMT

A recent article that was published by Cleary’s Note Book raises some interesting points about the security and reliability of storing critical business data to unencrypted physical media such as external hard drives or backup tapes. If your company is currently relying on traditional manual business continuity processes like this, it may be worth your while to take a moment and read the whole article.

According to gloucestercitynews.net, an important hard drive had gone missing from one of the processing rooms at the National Archives in MD on March 24, 2009, which may have possibly contained a lot of sensitive personally identifiable information that dates back to the Clinton Administration.

The incident has triggered a formal investigation by the Secret Service and the National Archives Office of the Inspector General. The investigation is primarily aimed at recovering the drive, and it’s not yet clear whether they suspect willful theft as the cause of the disappearance.

The hard drive in question was a 2TB MY BOOK external hard drive, manufactured by Western Digital. On the drive, was stored a copy of some backup tapes from the Executive Office of the President dating back to the Clinton Administration.

If you somehow manage to come across information relating to the whereabouts of this drive, you’d be strongly advised to contact the authorities immediately. National Archives and Records Administration is offering a $50K reward for the safe return of the device and the information contained within.

Now this brings up a good point. A large organization like the U.S. Government (who has extensive experience in handling and protecting large amounts of extremely sensitive information) has potentially been compromised by an individual stealing unencrypted backups stored to a physical media. If it can happen to them, it can certainly happen to any of us.

Unencrypted physical media is a very risky way to protect your information. As more privacy regulations continue to emerge, and the number of privacy-related cases before the courts continues to grow, it’s now becoming more important than ever that you take additional measures to secure your backups.

Today, there are numerous online backup solutions that provide a fully-automated way of encrypting your data, then securely transmitting this data to an offsite facility. Implementing one of these systems can be much easier than upgrading your current in-house backup systems. This will also free up a lot of time by automating a time-consuming manual process.

If you haven’t given much thought to encrypting and automating your backups, this might be a good time to start.

About The Author:

Storagepipe Solutions makes a great, secure alternative to backup tapes by providing safer online backup and email archiving alternatives.

Update: Readwriteweb also recently commented on this case stating that "It's hard to steal a cloud"

The Canadian eDiscovery Case You Need To Follow

editor@channelweb.com — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:01:55 GMT

First, before I forget, I just wanted to wish all of our Canadian readers a HAPPY CANADA DAY!

Every business manager right now should be watching what’s going on in Canada. The Basi-Virk corruption case is about to serve as a sobering reminder of why proper data management and internal enforcement of regulatory compliance practices are so important.

This case came as a result of one of the largest business deals in Canadian history, where B.C. Rail was sold to C.N. Rail.

As is often the case with high-stakes mega-deals like this, lawsuits and charges were filed afterwards.

There were some controversies that came up as a result of the bidding process, and the police were called in to investigate. Several people were arrested and charged with crimes, ranging from fraud to breach of trust, for allegedly leaking information about the deal.

During the trial, some of the defendants had requested the disclosure of emails dating from 2001 to 2005, from 15 key witnesses in the case. The defendants claimed that these emails would prove their innocence once and for all.

Now, the BC government is allegedly claiming that they had accidentally deleted these emails. As you can imagine, this is turning out to be a very lengthy and expensive legal battle with a lot of political implications.

I’m very interested to see how things will play out as a result of this failure to comply.

Someday, your organization might be called before a judge and asked to produce archived emails and business documents. Will you be ready for full disclosure, or will you be caught in an embarrassing situation?

Use this example as a conversation starter amongst the various departments and stakeholders within your organization. Take this opportunity to craft an internal data management policy that meets the needs of all involved, and prepares you for possible future litigation.

About The Writer:

Storagepipe Solutions helps companies comply with disclosure requests in the event of litigation with their suite of email archiving and online backup solutions.

The Whole Mark Stanford Mess

editor@channelweb.com — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:30:46 GMT

I know it gets old, but it really bears repeating. Any information produced on corporate technology assets can potentially be considered a business document. And that means that it's subject to potential discovery.

Every month or so, there's a new compliance or discovery case that hits the mainstream media and reminds us that we should be more careful about how we use and manage email. This month, it's the Mark Stanford disappearance.

Mr. Stanford is about to learn this the hard way. Now his personal life is reportedly plastered all over the internet.

This can be a good conversation starter with your prospects that can lead to discussions about their online backup and email archiving systems.(At least until next month when the next big story hits)