CA - Data protection is a must

Modern executives need to gather and process more intelligence on markets, customers, staff, suppliers and rivals than at any other time, yet there is a curious conundrum.

Just at the time storing data has become cheaper than anyone could have anticipated a handful of years ago, the total cost of backing up and protecting data has risen. As Eric Pitcher, Global VP for Technology and Strategy at CA explains, this is due to the tools getting cheaper but the number of tools required increasing.

"Cost per gigabyte of storage has really gone down, so the cost of the 'boxes' a company stores data in is way down, it's just there's a lot more data to store, so you need more boxes than before," he says.

"Protecting data is unavoidable. It's the lifeblood of a company. You need information at your fingertips, particularly for servicing customers. If your staff can't get a customer's details in front of them and the status of their order immediately, customers will just go elsewhere."

This basic requirement to have a company's data backed up is being driven by two factors. First, there is the obvious need to ensure information is kept off-site, backed-up in a safe, secure environment where it can be accessed should a company suffer internal server problems, a security breach or a business continuity disaster, such as a fire or flood. Secondly, there are regulatory rules regarding retention which need to be observed.

In the UK, both the FSA and HMRC require financial and VAT records to be stored responsibly for six years with HMRC advising it may often be necessary to store records for 'other tax purposes' for longer. It is a very serious issue because failure to store data responsibly can lead to public embarrassment as well as prosecution.

"There's a combination of needs," Pitcher continues.

"People want their data to be taken out of their offices and kept safe for them in case they need it. At the same time, they're also being required to show that they back up data and that it is kept safe and stored responsibly. It can vary from one country to another but there are normally rules around how long you can keep customer data. We build these in to our systems to ensure the law is adhered to."

OUTSIDE INFLUENCES

Devising a responsible data management plan is not only an internal issue or a means of keeping the right side of the law. Often outside influences can prompt companies to devise a strategy because it is something partner companies expect, explains Tim Goodwin, Senior Director Recovery Management and Data Modelling at CA.

"It's one of the most fundamental questions a partner will have about your business, do you keep data protected in case of a disaster?" he says.

"If you were hiring a photographer for your daughter's wedding and the guy dropped his camera in a puddle, you'd want some reassurance the photos weren't lost too. It's the same in business, if you can't reassure suppliers and partners that you manage your data well, it's unlikely they'll support your company.

"That's why it's still a surprise to me that so many companies don't do anything until it's too late and they've had an outage or they've had data stolen."

Indeed, there are many instances where companies take on board their obligation to protect data yet still do not turn on features which maximise that protection, even if they come as standard within a package.

Certainly CA's experience is that encryption technology, which ensures only authorised personnel can read data and a de-duplication feature, which prevents the same files being stored many times, are often left unused.

FIND OUT MORE

For further information and pricing on the backup and data protection products available from CA, contact your Phoenix Account Manager on 0845 265 1265 or email info@phoenixs.co.uk

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NOT ALL DATA IS CREATED EQUAL

Providing a backup service which is so robust it can switch to a remote backup server to provide uninterrupted access to data and applications can be very expensive and so prioritising data is normally a must.

"The big lesson companies have to learn is that not all data is created equally, even though you may think yours is," jokes Eric Pitcher, Global VP of Technology and Strategy at CA.

"You need to make decisions about which data and applications you need maximum uptime for. It may be a mission critical application, such as email, or the data that you simply can't wait to get hold of, such as a CRM database.

"Every company has a lot of data that doesn't need to be backed up as often because it doesn't change and you probably don't need to access it all the time."