Ask The Expert

Mario Amato, Vice President
Data Protection Services
GRM Information Management Services

What are some of the challenges pertaining to the Data Protection of a company’s sensitive information?
Protecting against data loss is a two-prong process.  To ensure the proper care and safeguarding of information you need to consider both hardware and software when putting together a protection platform.  In both cases data corruption and loss is a significant risk.  Hardware can be damaged in a variety of ways: natural disasters, blackouts, lack of care, even accidentally.  Any of these could cause critical data to be destroyed.  Software can become corrupted through viruses or simply removed through carelessness.  No matter what the reasons might be, it’s essential for a company to have a Data Protection plan in place.  You maintain your personal information, medical and financial records, with great care.  Business-critical information should be protected in a similar fashion.

Can you talk about how GRM works to ensure Data Protection?
Data Protection begins with personnel.  GRM’s highly trained Vault librarians and drivers utilize the most advanced laser scanners, designed to work with our innovative barcode tracking technology.  Drivers are also equipped with portable printers, capable of providing clients with delivery and pickup receipts immediately.  We also employ a full-time IT staff, available for technical support.
It ends inside our facility.  It’s a custom-built, secure, climate-controlled environment.  The vaults meticulously meet fire resistant construction standards and it’s also equipped with an independent HVAC system, which is always computer-monitored to maintain a constant temperature and relative humidity range.  We have state-of-the-art security – employing key pad entry, motion detectors and CCTV – and fire protection suppression systems.

How does Tape Rotation add to a Data Protection Platform?
Tapes are used as a physical method for backing up a company’s data.  It’s another way to keep sensitive material safe.  The tape rotation services we offer are significantly important to companies who are backing up mission critical data on a daily basis.  Basically, certain back up media has a life span with critical data depending on a customer’s "retention cycle.”  A particular client might require data to be retained anywhere from a day to a year, or even forever, before the information on the tapes is obsolete.  This is all policy driven from the client, that tape or set of tapes would rotate back based on its retention period.  This affords our clients the opportunity to re-write or copy data to this older version tape.  The "Retention Period” or ‘Return Dates" is then logged into our tape tracking system – a program designed to coordinate the return schedule based on our client’s needs.  Clients also have the option to enter their own return dates electronically via our online web portal called eAccess.  Keeping accurate dates and returning tapes on time is critical for a company’s auditing purposes.

What’s on the horizon for GRM’s Data Protection services?                                                                                                                                     The next evolution of Data Protection is our Electronic Back Up Solution.  We’ll provide a web-based and password protected option for Data Storage and Protection, all to increase the level of security and add another contingency for maintaining information securely.  Our software technology compresses and encrypts client data.  We then deploy a push technology from the clients’ server room or data center to SAS 70 Tier II hosting centers.  Data remains encrypted while it is pushed through from location to location and while at rest.This is beneficial because it allows us to eliminate the human transport aspect of Tape Storage by securely moving data off-site based on our clients set policies.  We reduce the current back-up window and provide full daily back-ups; this increases efficiencies and long term archiving on disk along with flexible retention policies on the back end as well as free up IT Staff time.  Finally, it provides higher availability of data for restores by leveraging current infrastructure, thus greatly minimizing the risk of data loss or data corruption.