Data Loss Horror Stories You Should Avoid this Halloween

Think an overcrowded inbox is scary? An empty inbox is even scarier.

Imagine how your organization would be affected if you suddenly lost access to every one of your emails. Consider all the resources (money, time and manpower) that would be exhausted trying to get them back.

While most businesses would turn to their current archiving system, they often and quickly find that it does not live up to their modern-day needs. The fact is, most archiving systems are guilty of not being able locate information easily, not allowing users to access data wherever and whenever necessary, not fully protecting data, and even falling short of being compliant with the latest regulations. In fact, according to a 2017 Vanson Bourne global survey, 88 percent of organizations say they’ve experienced these types of problems with their existing archiving solution.

As any IT professional knows, data loss is no joke. Make sure your archiving solution is in tip-top shape to help you avoid these horror stories.

The Strangers

In the last few years, ransomware has become a billion-dollar industry. Because of this, outsiders, or cybercriminals, are constantly looking for new ways to trick employees into opening an attachment or clicking a link that will help them gain access to an organization’s network and data – holding them hostage until they pay up. When hit with ransomware, attackers can freeze systems, block access to email servers and lock up information with different encryption tools.

Most recently hitting the scene is BadRabbit, a virus which poses as an Adobe update. In mid-October, the international attack shut down major media groups Interfax and Fontanka, holding files captive until ransom was paid.

In these instances, many people turn to their archive to get things back up and running without paying the ransom. However, once a threat is launched, it can spread throughout a network in no time at all. Even your archive is at risk if you don’t have the right safeguards in place.

Most analysts would agree that a good backup strategy is your best defense against ransomware. Today, it’s more important than ever to maintain separate, well-protected copies of the emails in a highly secure and resilient archive to achieve backup objectives.

I Know What You Did Last Summer

How’s your e-discovery solution?

Hopefully it’s decent, considering more than 80 percent of people need to look up information in an email that’s more than 90 days old, according to a recent Forrester report. And it’s not crazy to think you’ll have to search that far back.

When a legal inquiry comes in requesting to know what was said in an email from two years ago, businesses need to search and recover it – and quickly. The consequences if they’re not recovered are horror stories of their own.

Their current solution? Spending hours searching through old-school archives.

Consider the time spent performing a Google search. You expect results in 5 seconds or less. In today’s digital, fast-paced environment, old-school archiving simply isn’t logical. However, Vanson Bourne found that 50 percent of survey respondents say searching their archives takes at least five minutes. Twenty percent say it can take as long as 10 minutes.

You also need to think about regulatory compliance obligations. Forty-four percent of organizations aren’t totally confident in their e-discovery capabilities and more than double that is concerned about the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). As we get closer to the enactment of GDPR, Subject Access Requests (SARs) and Right To Be Forgotten (RTFB) need to be considered.

The Purge

Imagine an employee was absent-mindedly clicking around on his or her computer and suddenly hits delete. What if they deleted it intentionally? What if there was a technical failure?

If data is stored in one place, it only takes one accidental “delete” to wipe out an entire corporate memory. As inboxes get bigger, it’s easy to delete something that contains extremely important or valuable information.

And often, archiving solutions don’t offer an easy way to restore deleted emails.

Consider this. Someone in the human resources department is searching for another specific employee’s W2 form, when suddenly they accidentally hit delete – only to realize that it was an email containing an entire department’s forms as well. No matter how many times they click “undo,” the data isn’t coming back. It’s gone forever.

However, accidentally deleting an email or even an entire inbox doesn’t have to be a disaster. To keep business moving, ensure your organization isn’t only using an old on-premises storage box and seriously think about the benefits of a cloud-based solution, as well. Solutions should be able to index and archive data on the spot – and going to the cloud makes that task not only easier, but faster and cheaper.

No one wants to be the victim in any of these data loss horror stories, but the reality is that existing solutions on the market today aren’t meeting the needs of modern day organizations. Make sure your business’ archiving solutions are up to date and multi-dimensional with the ability to safeguard corporate data, boost productivity and efficiency and ensure compliance.