How about adding something similar to an audit so that if you store and control records, you have an inventory and you cross reference against those volumes?

If management had a requirement that the manager of the boxes of records and the media units pull back the inventory and check it against the bill you are paying for offsite storage, you would have serious problems.

The churning that is going on now in the offsite storage industry has made large inventories disappear. In the industries that actually require audits, this discovery is a disturbing trend.

Now add to that a deceptive  ( I was thinking of using fraudulent??) manner in which computer media is tracked. This problem began decades ago when certain companies realized the IT Manager had no interest in keeping an inventory of tapes and the records manager had no authority.

Here are two examples:  Big Data Bob company tired of their current vendor and the rapidly escalating storage costs. They went out for bid and chose a new vendor.  They were surprised when their current vendor threw themselves on the floor begging to keep the account and dropped their rates by 50%. Big Data Bob seemed to note an air of desperation but they changed anyway.  So the new and shiny vendor picked up the tape, all happy because they bid on a volume of 276,000 tapes.  Oh Happy Days!  But when the actual volumes were loaded on the trucks, low and behold only 184,920 tapes were real.

It was so VERY exciting for a while as Big Data Bob was likely to enter into litigation soon and having a third of your media mysteriously missing was sure to look bad. (Can you say summary judgement........spoliation?)

Example 2:  120,000 tapes, a change of vendors and voila only 81,000 tapes show up.

So super sleuths what happened?  Answer:  Some of the storage companies use a software that adds a tape to the inventory the moment it crosses the doorway of the warehouse. But when you pull a tape, it will NOT credit the tape until the end of the month. So Grandfather comes in Monday, Father comes in Wednesday, Son comes in on Friday but Grandfather ships back in the rotation. Week two:  Grandmother comes in, Father goes back, Mother comes in and Son goes back and Daughter comes in and Mother goes back. Grandfather comes back. The tricky vendor would be billing you for six tapes at the end of two weeks.  But the inventory at the end of two weeks is only three tapes. Now takes this out over the life of the contract. The lifetime inventory grows by a phantom 30% to 40%. That calculates to a 200% billing rate for the actual volume in a three year contract.

Billing records for tape storage are records, so it is easy enough for records management to check this out. Most companies do not discover this until E-Discovery and Depositions. Having a judge think that you are 1) Dishonest and hiding tapes or 2) That you are incompetent to the extent that you lost count of your own records series is not the way to begin litigation.

In case 1 above the storage company had to reimburse over $75,000 in storage fees. So add this to your metrics for success.
 
Hugh Smith
FIRELOCK Fireproof Modular Vaults
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