Disaster Recovery and Data Protection Articles and information:

The Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act of 2002 legislates how long, and the manner in which, companies store their financial records.  SOX is designed to safeguard against accounting errors and illegal financial activities.  SOX specifically states that electronic records and messages (email/IM) must be saved for at least five years to ensure auditors and other regulators can easily obtain requested documents.

A remote backup company provides the infrastructure that ascertains compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and will use data backup software that enables organizations to address SOX rules without the need for additional equipment or services such as tape libraries and offsite media storage.  Storing financial records with a managed service provider who implements remote data backup solutions ensures critical data is secure and quickly assessable.  Electronically transporting records, using industry standard encryption to secure offsite data backup locations where the data remains encrypted, minimizes the chance of unethical access or destruction of data.  Generally, a remote backup company can help publicly traded businesses and companies (such as accounting firms) who conduct audits adhere to SOX by:

• Storing data at highly secure, offsite data backup locations;

• Ensuring that critical records and communications remain encrypted;

• Using disk-to-disk backup and retrieval, avoiding the hassles of backup tapes;

• Offering specialized remote backup solutions for storing, monitoring and archiving email and instant messages;

• Providing disaster recovery services and data loss protection.

When choosing a managed service provider, make certain that the data backup services provided fulfill requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act as they relate to record retention, records production, internal controls, record alteration and destruction.

Fact:  20% of SMBs suffer a major disaster every 5 years.