Overview

Data security, integrity and availability is of the utmost importance for small and medium size businesses (SMB’s) as it is the lifeline of any organization and critical for maintaining its business continuity. SMB’s are relying heavily on information systems to increase competitive advantage and profits. With this the demands of traditional tape backup systems are reaching their end of life. They typically require large capital investments, are prone for human error, unreliable and need manual intervention.

Client Objective

A nation wide accredited fire investigation company needed a way to securely backup, retain and manage large quantities of  digital evidence. Their existing  tape backup solution was at capacity and in need of a very expensive upgrade to meet digital backup storage demands.

The organization also wanted to reduce liability associated with digital evidence, provide backup retention for 7 years, reduce manual personnel backup processes, recover data quickly and in numerous locations without the need to rebuild server infrastructure in case of a crash, provide incremental file backups with numerous versions and finally automate backups across the entire organization to include desktop systems.

Client Solution

The solution  included 2 backup strategies. The first strategy included an on site backup utilizing conventional external storage drives that would be rotated monthly and stored in a fire proof safe in the tune of 2 TB NAS drives. The second solution implemented secure (encrypted) online continuous data protection utilizing online services. Ultimately the client received the following benefits from this managed online backup service.

• Quick backups and restores
• Minimal human intervention as the backup process is automated
• No threat of data theft as the data is encrypted
• Protection against loss of data during system crash
• Restore backed up data to any machine using a web interface