RenovoData Weekly Articles

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was enacted as an effort to boost the national economy out of a prolonged recession. The Act proposes a $787 billion economic stimulus package which contains a number of items that likely will offer grants for organizations that invest in green IT solutions. Below are specific areas that may hold potential funding opportunities for spend allocated to IT data recovery solutions.

Digitizing Health Records.  The medical industry is facing new mandates to make patient records more secure. $19 billion will be allocated for modernizing healthcare record-keeping and implementing health information technology to lower costs and improve quality. Doctors’ practices will receive between $44,000 and $64,000 in incentives to computerize medical records, and hospitals will get as much as $11 million each. A reliable remote backup company helps meet the critical need for secure offsite backup, server virtualization for disaster recovery remote backup storage solutions which the government mandates as a uniform, nationwide benchmark in patient record-keeping and compliance.

IT Energy Efficiency.  Energy providers will provide significant incentives for entities that
implement projects toward reducing energy consumption. $20 billion in tax rewards for energy
efficiency projects will be awarded out of the stimulus. An offsite data backup company that provides economic and ecological solutions through server virtualization and data deduplication helps reduce energy utilization and simplifies the IT infrastructure within an organization.

The proposed budget allocations from the economic stimulus presents a big move to areas such as healthcare, energy and the environment.  There is an underlying indication that IT solutions like those offered by an offsite data backup and IT disaster recovery services provider helps meet efficiency standards through providing more streamlined operations and meeting stringent security and governmental regulations regarding data protection.  The proposed benefits of the economic stimulus offers further encouragement that now is the time for “greening” IT practices and taking vigilant steps to ensure sound data loss prevention measures are put into place.

Data Deduplication

Key Benefits of Data Deduplication 

SERVER VIRTUALIZATION

Key Benefits of Server Virtualization

• Cost of company downtime
• Cost to restart in the event the business shuts down after an initial loss
• Cost of lost business and customer retention and acquisition
• Cost to rebuild customer information accumulated over the years
• Potential costs of litigation if the lost data poses a risk for the company to face legal liabilities

Cloud computing has gained popularity over the past two years.  The concept incorporates software as a service (SaaS) as well as other technology trends that have the common theme of reliance on the Internet for satisfying the data storage needs of the user.  However, cloud storage providers such as Carbonite, Amazon S3 and Google App Engine have recently been troubled with recurrent shutdowns and losses of customer data.  The problems experienced by these companies have made some question as to whether cloud storage poses a data security risk, specifically due to users depending on unseen infrastructures holding massive data vaults that can attract the interest of hackers and electronic terrorists.

Unlike a reliable remote backup company that stores data at an offsite data vault, the distinctive attributes of cloud storage require risk assessments in areas such as data recovery, as well as privacy and legal issues such as e-discovery, regulatory compliance and auditing.  In contrast to using a secure remote backup service provider, below are a few precautions Gartner gives when considering a cloud storage service provider.

• Since cloud services bypass the physical, logical and personnel controls IT organizations exert over in-house programs, sensitive data processed outside the enterprise brings with it an inherent level of risk.

• Customers are ultimately responsible for the security and integrity of their own data, even when it is held by a cloud service provider.  Remote backup service providers are subjected to security certifications.

• When using cloud services, the exact location of where the company’s data is hosted is unknown.  In fact, the data may be stored in an unknown country.

• Data is in a shared environment alongside data from other customers, posing an encryption risk which could make data totally unusable.

• Many cloud service providers lack the ability to replicate data and application infrastructure across multiple sites, making the stored data vulnerable to a total failure in the event of a disaster.  The cloud service provider’s capability to do a complete restoration is imperative in the case of a catastrophe.

• Investigating inappropriate or illegal activity may be impossible in cloud computing.  Cloud services are difficult to investigate because logging and data for multiple customers may be co-located and spread across an ever-changing set of hosts and data centers.

• In the event that the cloud service provider goes out of business or gets acquired by a larger company, make sure the provider is able to get the data back in a format into which a replacement application can be imported.

Although there is no such thing as 100% foolproof backup, partnering with a trusted and secure data backup service company will provide a higher level of security to store all mission-critical and regulatory compliant data.  If contemplating on storing in the clouds, consider the factors mentioned in this article.

Businesses are facing many hard-hitting challenges caused by the current economic environment, where technology budgets have become negatively impacted by the credit crunch. According to an article published by the Wall Street Journal in October 2008, 61% of CIOs are currently re-evaluating their budgets, 49% are trying to save money by renegotiating contracts with their vendors, and almost 25% have instituted a hiring freeze - which is a bad sign indicating that many businesses may not have enough staff on hand to complete already started projects on time.  Opportunities for IT cost reduction can be found within key categories where Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) can be reduced, and core areas where remote backup companies enable savings during these hard economic times that many businesses are facing.

The sudden onset of the financial crisis and consequential recession has induced strong growth in IT spending for 2009, causing IT organizations to reevaluate their operating costs and prepare for the worst.   Money is tight and reducing overhead is the key to keeping the doors to the business open.  Globally throughout all industry sectors, IT organizations are searching for ways to operate leaner.  The growth of corporate storage needs and the resulting increased importance of data protection and storage are forcing IT departments to grapple with increased costs and complexities.  By managing an efficient storage environment through outsourcing, centralizing and automating IT functions, organizations will realize a reduction in TCO of storage infrastructure, increased performance and lower overhead.  Hiring a remote backup service providers to handle the operation and maintenance of hardware and software will prove more efficient and cost effective.

A remote backup company assists organizations in achieving a reduction in their TCO through several ways.  Their most immediate means to accomplish this are through eliminating expenses associated with the following:

Hardware and Software.  Includes hardware and software purchases, maintenance and support contracts, training and professional services, upgrades and other software such as virus protection and backup software.

IT Operations.  Components include the costs associated with server deployment, server configuration, network and storage infrastructure, data center power and cooling and other system administration tasks.

Downtime.  Includes costs of restoring services, lost employee productivity and lost revenue.

Business Administration.  These include the labor cost associated with creating orders, obtaining purchase approvals, negotiating vendor contracts and tracking the procurement process.

Tough economic times force downward pressure on IT budgets that require organizations to operate leaner.  When calculating TCO, procurement of assets, IT support, administration, downtime and operation cost are all factors to consider.   Outsourcing a remote backup service provider to uncover the hidden costs and manage IT operations associated with the business can be critical to achieving significant savings as the organization's needs continue to grow.   Eliminating business practices that are significant cost centers for the business, as well as implementing advanced standards of data storage and protection, will have a positive impact on reducing TCO, while inevitably increasing the ROI for the company.

Data breach notice provisions applicable to health information were signed into law as part of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act provisions of the federal economic stimulus legislation. The HITECH Act broadens HIPAA data security and compliance requirements by directly subjecting businesses that provide support and services to HIPAA covered entities to HIPAA's privacy and security requirements, as well as penalties for violating these policies. Under the changes brought in by the HITECH Act, these business associates are now prone to the same government civil and criminal penalties as covered entities. Prior to the new legislation business associates that neglected to properly protect patient data were liable to the covered entities via their service contracts, but they did not face governmental penalties. However, today business associates must also comply with HIPPA regulation requiring the implementation of formal policies and procedures, along with documentation obligations.

The HITECH Act also adds the first data breach notification requirement to ever come from the federal government. HIPAA covered entities will now have to notify patients and customers of any unauthorized acquisition, access, use or disclosure of their protected health information. Similarly, business associates that experience breaches will have to notify the covered entities with whom they have contracts if any data has been compromised.

The HITECH Act brings regulations beyond HIPAA privacy and data security:

• Notification must be sent regarding security breaches involving unencrypted, sensitive data

• Breaches must be disclosed to the affected patients within 5 days

• Fines start from $5,000 to $25,000 per violation for organizations that negligently disclose patient records
  

Employing a remote backup company to implement disaster recovery and data protection solutions to comply with mandates within the HITECH Act can serve as a significant measure in avoiding any chances of violating the new data breach laws within HIPAA. Using a credible offsite data backup provider can ensure the highest degree of compliance standards are met regarding policies set by state and federal regulation through ensuring highly secure data encryption prior to transmission and storage, proper disaster recovery planning and continuous data protection.

Bare Metal Restore Explained

When you buy a brand new hard drive, it is completely blank.  With no files or even an operating system installed, it is mere “bare metal”.  In disaster recovery, a bare metal restore is the process of reconfiguring a system from scratch after a disastrous failure.  The term “Bare Metal Restore” refers to the process of restoring data to a bare metal component, reinstalling the operating system and software applications and then, if possible, restoring data and settings.  Enterprises often need to restore full systems onto bare metal for immediate continuance of operations following hardware failure, system upgrades or facility disaster.  These are all examples of hard drive recovery situations that often end up with the same outcome:  a blank hard drive that needs files restored in order to return to the state before the problem occurred. 

The Bare Metal Restore capability employed by some offsite data backup service providers allows IT administrators to quickly recover lost, damaged or corrupted data in a streamlined manner to any bare metal system (at any location throughout the enterprise) without having to manually go through the installation process once again.  In general, Bare Metal Restore allows administrators to restore the complete system on new hardware – regardless of manufacturer – including local data, user profiles, registry/system state, service pack files and encrypted files.

Comparison of Data Restore Methods:

Manual Restores

• Time consuming - everything must be done "by hand"

• Operating systems are complex and volatile, with a mix of permanent and variable information

• Require a broad range of skills, including network, database, operating system and application software expertise

• Depends on ad hoc data management techniques that are unreliable and often out-of-date

Bare Metal Restores

• Highly automated - insert a CD, initiate Bare Metal Restore, wait a short time, and restore is completed

• Reduce complexity and costs for IT administrators

• Restore the complete system on new hardware, regardless of manufacturer

• Restores include local data, user pro files, registry/system state, service pack files and encrypted files

Fact: The leading causes of computer crashes are hardware malfunction (44%), user error (32%), software corruption (14%), computer viruses (7%), and natural disaster (3%).