Don’t Risk the Dangers of Insufficient Protection for Your Offline Assets
There are all types of data storage and backup strategies. Each is applicable to different businesses and industries based on the type of data they need to store and how accessible that data needs to be. A company looking to upgrade its storage strategy will still need to find a way to properly dispose of offline IT assets that are no longer useful to the company.
These tapes can’t just be thrown away, however, and failure to properly organize your offline asset disposition process comes with serious consequences for your business. It’s important for you and your IT team to understand the risks that come with a lackluster approach to backup. Gaining this understanding will help inform decision-making as you and your staff work to improve the data storage process.
Backup failures come with a significant price tag
One of the reasons that IT professionals overlook the importance of protecting offline assets like backup tapes is that they don’t fully grasp the consequences, noted CIO Insight. According to a report by tech firm EMC, $1.7 trillion in losses occurred in 2014 as a result of insufficient data protections. This number is less than surprising considering that 32 percent of respondents had previously suffered data loss.
When it comes to offline assets, tapes can be stolen, damaged or lost more easily if your company’s disposition process is haphazard. Ensuring that backup tapes are being monitored and destroyed with a trackable and controllable process is vital if you don’t want your company to lose millions of dollars to data recovery.
Haphazard backups are a major compliance risk
Another major cost associated with a poorly planned strategy for backup destruction is the monetary cost of failing an audit. Compliance officials will want to see paperwork that can verify a chain of custody and determine who is responsible for the private data stored on your legacy hardware. Failure to produce this data could come with serious fines, or, even worse, could mean the end of your business. Thankfully, this issue can be resolved for most companies with the help of affordable software tools.
Disorganized protection impacts the rest of the workflow
Protecting your online assets isn’t just a good idea for the sake of keeping track of critical data. A disorganized strategy will mean plenty of confusion and miscommunication stand in the way of unwanted offline assets making their way off your site and into the hands of a reputable destruction vendor. Expecting your IT staff to keep track of tapes by hand is a difficult task. Loading up your team with tedious bookkeeping tasks like this one also make them more prone to error in this and other aspects of their job. For companies that are understaffed to take on this project, a software solution like AssetAware may be the best option.
A single, streamlined solution offers better results
SecurityWeek pointed out that data storage strategies grow more ineffective as users incorporate additional solutions into the mix. Users get the best results managing their data within a single, streamlined system. Failure to do so can lead companies to greater confusion and additional costs.
That being said, companies interested in solving their offline asset management problems would do well to rebuild their disposition process from scratch. The resources available through software like AssetAware make it easy to develop an intuitive, trackable system for managing and disposing of offline IT assets. Minimizing complexity in the workflow will also make it easier for employees to complete their daily tasks.