Backup to Tape—Why Risk It?
Costly to transport, vulnerable to loss, and often unencrypted, tapes are increasingly becoming a relic in the data backup world. Those who have been using backup tapes for years may swear by their reliability, but if they were to experience a disaster, they might learn their true cost.
In an article published by Bank Systems and Technology, the vice president of IT for a Mississippi-headquartered credit union noted that for many companies affected by Hurricane Katrina, “about 24% of their tapes were unusable when they got to their disaster recovery centers.”
Furthermore, a report in SearchSecurity cites that 20% of nightly backups fail to capture all data, and 40% of IT managers were able to recover data from a tape when they needed it.
Moreover, consider the list of companies that have had tapes stolen or simply lost:
2011 – Phoenix Ireland, 62,000 records lost
2010 – NY Health and Hospitals Corp., 1.7 million records stolen
2009 – Zurich Insurance, 51,000 records lost
2008 – GE Money, 650,000 records lost
2008 – Bank of NY Mellon, 4.5 million records lost
And if you think you’ll never lose a backup tape, what about a simple restore? What would 8-, 12-, 48- hours of downtime cost your business? Why risk it?
