Editorial by Ike Ikeme

With nature’s recent unrelenting punishment and what seems to be the growing threat of “evil doers”, the need for data security and storage tools has grown exponentially. 9/11, Katrina, and the recent theft of U.S. Veterans’ information, have been eye openers for many companies and organizations, and contingency plans have never been in greater demand.

According to the Association of Small Business Development Centers, on average 43% of businesses damaged in a disaster close for good. Forty-three percent! That’s almost a one in two chance of not recovering from an unforeseen circumstance! Probably more astonishing is the 57% of preemptive businesses that experience long-term growth and other fiscal benefits brought on by decline in competition.

Reputable industry analysts such as Gartner and IDC estimate that insufficient data backup and security, cost an organization around US $35,000 (per incident) in lost sensitive data. Recent analysis by the same companies have identified that internal staff pose 80% of the threat to organizations confidential information, with external threats constituting 20%.

The fiscal consequences of loss or theft of data far supercede their value. Today, data backup and security are considered part of a company’s internal controls and gravely influence investor decision. Subsequently, lack of proper internal controls may be reflected in a company’s stock price, or little or no investor confidence (funds).

More importantly, non-compliance in this area may result in hefty government fines and legal expense for companies in specific industries. Earlier this year JP Morgan Chase forked-over $2.1 million to securities regulators to settle allegations that the financial services giant failed to retain business-related email for the required minimum three-year period. That hefty sum didn’t even include other extrinsic cost. As part of the settlement, JP Morgan agreed to establish appropriate controls for email communications within 90 days. The company also likely had to pay legal fees and suffered lost productivity searching for requested emails, and may have even needed to hire an electronic data discovery firm.

With this in mind it is easy to see that data storage and protection is key to business continuity. Colocation continues to be the answer and finding the right data center is critical in ensuring data security. Nonetheless, simply colocating is not enough to ensure the safety of a company’s data.

At Fibernet, we’ve made data storage and safety our business, and in an effort to increase our capabilities as a Total-Service-Provider, Fibernet will now offer Data Backup Services to all clients colocated in it’s Class A Data Center facility in Orem, Utah. If your organization needs a secure, high-availability, expandable data storage solution, Fibernet’s shared data storage is a cost-effective option in comparison to purchasing a less flexible fixed-capacity system or paying for an off site backup service that would increase bandwidth consumption. Fibernet will provide its clients access to Enterprise RAID Storage Arrays for back up and storage via a direct 100 Mb/s Ethernet connection separate from an Internet connection or any other network connection for added safety.

File backup and management protocols are available for Windows, Linux, and UNIX operating systems and files can be transferred using FTP, SFTP, HTTP, HTTPS, Rsync, CIFS (SMB), or NFS.

This coupled with a proactive and reactive approach to monitoring, and managed services, will keep your data safe, secure, and as redundant and reliable as Fibernet’s network!

Thinking of colocating with us? Give us a call today and schedule a tour!