Until fairly recently, bUsinesses backed Up their sensitive and distribUted corporate
data in a variety of ways that put a good portion of the burden on users’ shoulders. Maybe
they deployed shared network drives and mandated that employees back up data periodically
by uploading to those drives. Or they synchronized users’ folders with a central server. Perhaps
they doled out USB flash drives for remote users to keep in their offices or for salespeople to
bring on the road. These methods had the potential to work well, but only if users were vigilant
and committed. If they slipped, corporate security could slip too.
Mike Wipperfeld, vice
president, product
management at Iron
Mountain Digital,
offers his insight and
expertise in the “Do’s
and Don’ts of Online
Backup” (see page 14).
“People who travel all the time are not going to
back up important data to the company shared drive
every day,” says Jackie Su, senior product marketing manager, data protection and recovery, for Iron
Mountain Digital.
But a different breed of online backup solutions
from companies like Iron Mountain allows businesses
to back up and retrieve data via the Internet in a “set
and forget” format that eases the burden on users
while strengthening the security of corporate data.
These are offerings whose time has come. Businesses are beginning to recognize that traditional
backup solutions didn’t offer the consistency and
reliability that enterprise-class online backup can.
Compliance requirements in industries like finance,
government and health care seem to grow more
stringent by the day, which means that companies in
those industries can take no chances that data could
be lost or compromised. In the past, says Su, a user
who lost a USB drive with confidential information
might feel uneasy but not face any real consequences.
“With compliance requirements, that’s not acceptable
anymore,” she says.
Increasingly, companies need not only to protect
their data but also prove that they are protecting
it. Penalties for failing to do so can quickly put a
company out of business.
In addition, as the rise of telecommuting, outsourcing and contract work results in more mobile
workers, the number of laptops and BlackBerry and
other mobile devices carrying sensitive data has
skyrocketed. According to Facebook, users of its
mobile products tripled last year from 5 million
to 15 million—and it’s safe to assume that a good
portion of those users also have jobs and access
to corporate information on many of those mobile
