Are you protecting your most valuable business asset?
What would happen if you lost all the data on your computer - backup tapes and all?
Studies show most businesses that experience a catastrophic loss of computer data never recover. Our Secure Computer Backup Service can help protect your business by using the Internet to send encrypted copies of your critical data files to our off-site data storage facility every night.
At RIGCI Inc. We backup your files while you sleep! Could you afford to lose all your company data? Your most valuable business asset will always be safe, even if your computers are not.
After less than two days of deliberations, a jury awarded billionaire Ron Perelman $604 million from Morgan Stanley.The panel will return Tuesday to decide whether the billionaire and his holding company deserve punitive damages, which could push Perelman's total award to $2.7 billion. Morgan Stanley said they could not find the email backup tapes...
Morgan Stanley was routinely overwriting data on 20% of its backup tapes, despite SEC orders requiring it to cease and desist from such behavior. In January 2005, the SEC hit Morgan Stanley with a "Wells Notice" seeking $10 million in penalties for failure to comply with its orders. In December, Morgan Stanley offered to pay $15 million to settle the expanded complaint, but the SEC hasn't accepted. InformationWeek March 27, 2006
"Marriott International Inc.'s time-share division said yesterday that it is missing backup computer tapes containing credit card account information and the Social Security numbers of about 206,000 time-share owners and customers, as well as employees of the company." Washington Post, December 28, 2005
"Citigroup said Monday that personal information on 3.9 million consumer lending customers of its CitiFinancial subsidiary was lost by UPS while in transit to a credit bureau" CNN June 6, 2005
"Over 40 million card accounts were exposed to potential fraud due to a security breach that occurred at a third-party processor of payment card transactions, MasterCard International said." CNN July 27, 2005
"ChoicePoint: More ID theft warnings... company says criminals able to obtain almost 140,000 names, addresses and other information." CNN February 2005
"America Online has confirmed that hackers have illegally compromised an undisclosed number of its member accounts" News.com June 16, 2000
"LexisNexis, a worldwide provider of legal and business data, announced yesterday that information about 32,000 consumers was fraudulently gathered in a series of incidents." Washington Post March 2005
"For the second time in about a year, the credit reporting company Equifax Canada Inc. has suffered a security breach that has given criminals access to personal financial information." Globe And Mail June 2005
"AOL breach gives spam fight a twist... The security breach, believed to be one of the worst of its kind, is the latest twist in the proliferation of spam: a rogue employee supplying a subscriber list for profit." USA Today June 2004
"Bank of America says at least 1.2 million federal employee credit card accounts may be exposed to theft or hacking" Time February 2005
Iron Mountain Admits Tape Loss, Recommends Encryption April 22, 2005
In a move that could fuel efforts to change data storage practices, records management giant Iron Mountain has admitted losing a customer's backup tapes and is recommending that customers begin encrypting tapes.
"Iron Mountain performs upwards of five million pickups and deliveries of backup tapes each year, " the company said in a statement Thursday. "Nevertheless, since the beginning of the year, four events of human error at Iron Mountain resulted in the loss of a customer's computer backup tapes. While four losses is not a large number in comparison to an annual rate of five million transportation events, any loss is important to customers and to Iron Mountain."
Iron Mountain did not name the customer, but the admission comes on the heels of announcements from Bank of America and Ameritrade that the financial firms had lost backup tapes containing customer data and were notifying customers.
"Iron Mountain is advising its customers that current, commonly used disaster recovery processes do not address increased requirements for protecting personal information from inadvertent disclosure," the company said.
Companies commonly create multiple copies of their computer data on backup tapes and move them off site to allow for recovery in case of a disaster. According to a recent report from the Enterprise Strategy Group, only seven percent of businesses encrypt all of their backup tapes.
Many businesses don't encrypt because the process increases the complexity of the backup process and may reduce the reliability of an effective disaster recovery plan, Iron Mountain said.
"Iron Mountain, therefore, is recommending that companies encrypt backup tapes containing personal information, but take care to incorporate encryption in a way that does not compromise their overall disaster recovery plans," the company said. "This announcement is the beginning of a campaign to educate our customers on these important issues so that together we can start to work toward solutions."
Iron Mountain noted that the accidental loss of backup tapes "poses a potential risk if sensitive information stored on those tapes is unencrypted. ... Iron Mountain is not aware of any incident in which the physical loss of a backup tape resulted in the unauthorized access of personal information. It is important to understand that unencrypted information stored on backup tapes is difficult to read, but it is not impossible. Companies need to reassess their backup strategies and seriously consider encrypting sensitive data to prevent a potential breach of privacy."
"We invest more in training, automation and process controls than anyone in our industry," stated Iron Mountain CEO Richard Reese. "But even Iron Mountain is not immune from human error. The only effective means to prevent unauthorized access to data is the use of encryption."
Iron Mountain spokesperson Melissa Burman said the company made the announcement "to create awareness and educate our customers on this issue. We believe encryption is the best way for businesses to meet the increasing need for privacy protection."
The company isn't currently working with storage security vendors or offering an encryption solution, she said.
"For now, we're focused on the education component, but we are evaluating solutions to bring to our customers, either directly or indirectly, that will make it easier for them to implement encryption into the tape backup process without compromising disaster recovery objectives," Burman told Enterprise Storage Forum.
files to our off-site data storage facility every night. There's nothing you have to do. The system is automatic, affordable, and secure. No one can access your data, not even us. Your most valuable business asset will always be safe, even if your computers are not.
If I Lost My Digital Records, I Could Not Run Or Manage My Practice!
"Outsourcing my data backup process to RIGCI Inc. gives me the security of having my data safely and consistently backed up, and we no longer have to worry about daily backups, or having to carry around an extra backup drive offsite. Our patient records, scheduling, x-rays, patient images, office documents and accounting records are all digital. If I lost these files I would not be able to run or manage my practice, and I would have issues with the Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario. This is why secure offsite data backup is so important. I made the decision to work with RIGCI because I felt that I could trust the people that run the company, which has worked out as I expected and they have been really easy to deal with and have been accommodating in all respects. I also get a daily confirmation that the backup has completed successfully, and the costs are reasonable."
Dr. John Smith
