cliaz Posted March 20, 2007 Share Posted March 20, 2007 http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/20/lost.data.ap/index.html JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) -- Perhaps you've experienced that sinking feeling when a single keystroke accidentally destroys hours of work. Now imagine wiping out a disk drive containing an account worth $38 billion. That's what happened to a computer technician reformatting a disk drive at the Alaska Department of Revenue. While doing routine maintenance work, the technician accidentally deleted applicant information for an oil-funded account -- one of Alaska residents' biggest perks -- and mistakenly reformatted the backup drive, as well. There was still hope, until the department discovered its third line of defense had failed: backup tapes were unreadable. "Nobody panicked, but we instantly went into planning for the worst-case scenario," said Permanent Fund Dividend Division Director Amy Skow. The computer foul-up last July would end up costing the department more than $200,000. Over the next few days, as the department, the division and consultants from Microsoft Corp. and Dell Inc. labored to retrieve the data, it became obvious the worst-case scenario was at hand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ursa Majoris Posted March 20, 2007 Share Posted March 20, 2007 Just read this on Yahoo. The backup tapes part is criminal - tapes need to be tested often to ensure readability. There's been "no witch hunt" but someone needs a hugh kick in the ass because that's negligence. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cliaz Posted March 20, 2007 Author Share Posted March 20, 2007 Just read this on Yahoo. The backup tapes part is criminal - tapes need to be tested often to ensure readability. There's been "no witch hunt" but someone needs a hugh kick in the ass because that's negligence. Agreed. If i'm backing up a solution that hold information on $38 billion dollars. Not only do I have a nice quantum robot backing it up, i'm dumping everything to an EMC or a disk array and setting up a tape rotation. 1 full backup a week to tape and 6 incremental backups. Keep the fulls off site for 90 days and keep the incrementals on site for 30. When tapes come back, used them over 4 more times then trash them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffeeman Posted March 20, 2007 Share Posted March 20, 2007 Agreed. If i'm backing up a solution that hold information on $38 billion dollars. Not only do I have a nice quantum robot backing it up, i'm dumping everything to an EMC or a disk array and setting up a tape rotation. 1 full backup a week to tape and 6 incremental backups. Keep the fulls off site for 90 days and keep the incrementals on site for 30. When tapes come back, used them over 4 more times then trash them. You lost me at 'Agreed'. I'm glad to pay guys like you to do this nerdy crap for me.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cliaz Posted March 20, 2007 Author Share Posted March 20, 2007 (edited) You lost me at 'Agreed'. I'm glad to pay guys like you to do this nerdy crap for me.... pretty much what you said is why most companies feel they don't need to spend too much into data security. Not because they don't want to spend the money to store it and protect it, it's because they dont know just how important a backup solution really is. You need at least three levels of backup to be safe and to monitor all three layers daily, weekly, monthly and yearly with restore testing daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. I bet you the state of Alaska spends more money on it's disaster recovery next year. Edited March 20, 2007 by cliaz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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