As a vault owner and operator I would concur with Gerard statements.
Your offsite service provider relationship should be built on trust
given that you are in a sense trusting them with your entire business
and related information assets.
Regarding case storage - in all honesty it is easier and less costly
for the offsite vault which is why the nations largest records
management company pushes case storage.
It is in almost all circumstances a poor practice for the client as
Gerard has listed excellent reasons.
If your offsite vendor invest in the technology and adds the correct
media tracking infrastructure - one that allows the client and vault
in real time have the same view and allow the client to at any time
conduct real time reviews then you should never have a missing or
questionable tape situation.
The right infrastructure for use in an offsite vault and also in an
internal onsite IT department is out there and can be found at:
www.tapetrack.com
Regards,
Michael
Michael Marchand
VeriTrust - VP Operations
713 263 9000
www.veritrust.net
On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 08:32:29 +1100, Gerard J. Nicol
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Lori,
>
> Firstly, I would like to clarify that while I have seen IT people roughly
> handle tape, the Data Security industry (AKA Media Vaults) go out of their
> way to ensure tape is handled professionally.
>
> Secondly, I am amazed by your response to HIPPA and SOX by storing tapes in
> locked cases.
>
> From a HIPPA perspective a locked box is really not going to stop anyone who
> wants to read confidential information from reading it, the only secure way
> of ensuring this is to encrypt the data on the tapes.
>
> From a SOX perspective, I do not see how hiding tapes away in a box helps
> fulfill the goals of SOX. It is kind of like saying that post Enron that you
> can now only use Aurther Anderson auditors if they are also deaf mutes.
>
> I usually measure the quality of a Data Security firm by which product they
> push. It is far easier to store your tapes in a locked container than take
> responsibility for all of your individual tapes, this is why many vaults
> encourage you to do it.
>
> My advice to people when choosing an offsite provider is to look for one you
> can trust rather than one that works on the premise that you can not trust
> them with anything but the storage of a locked box.
>
> They are out there, and they are often not the people who lost a Bank of
> America tapes.
>
> Some of the disadvantages of storing in locked boxes are:
>
> (1) The vault can not check for irregularities such as the same tape being
> sent offsite every day, or no tapes at all.
> (2) The vault can not report to you on tape damage.
> (3) If you are running a TMS your vault can not compare what was meant to go
> offsite with what is actually sent offsite (this is critical).
> (4) If you want one tape back you have to call back the whole case (and if
> you do not know what case it is people often call back all cases). This
> leaves you far more exposed than you have to be.
> (5) It puts the whole management burden on the customer.
>
> Large banks and the like have been sending tapes offsite for decades and
> have very refined DR plans. Almost all of these companies store in open
> shelving in media vaults.
>
> Usually, only small business store in boxes. These companies usually have
> less refined DR plans.
>
> Go figure...
>
> Gerard
>
> On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 10:41:46 -0700, Lorie Mcaleb <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> >Jeff,
> >My understanding of e-vaulting is storing the data off site as a
> >disaster
> >Recovery method rather than moving tapes back and forth. This saves the
> >Contracting company time and storage to physically pick up the tapes.
> >The data is backed up to their servers and stored, updated at a schedule
> >determined by you the customer.
> >I looked into this recently and the concerns we had was access to the
> >data, the idea that the data never goes away (on their
> >servers)regardless of what techniques are use to "scrub" the drives, and
> >the requirements to get the data to the vendor. We opted for backing up
> >the data and moving the tapes off site. To avoid the "hockey puck use"
> >and meet HIPAA/SOX concerns we store the tapes are in a locked
> >container, secured so only our employees have access to them. The case
> >is swapped weekly by our employees. This may be a unique situation since
> >we lease a "vault" for offsite storage at a facility near our main
> >location.
> >
> >Thank you,
> >Lori McCaleb
>
> List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
> Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance
>
--
Regards,
Michael Marchand
713 263 9000 ofc
713 724 3778 cell
List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance
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