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According to gloucestercitynews.net, the National Archives
are in search of an important hard drive containing sensitive files dating back
to the Clinton Administration, and are offering a $50,000 reward for the safe
return of this property.
The drive in question was a 2GB MYBOOK external hard drive,
produced by Western Digital, and it contained copies of backup tapes from over
9 years ago. If you or anyone you know somehow obtains information on the
whereabouts of the lost drive mentioned in this article, I’d encourage you to
contact the proper authorities. (And don't forget to ask about the reward)
The article states that there is a current ongoing
investigation in progress, being conducted by the National Archives Office of
the Inspector General, with the help of the Secret Service. The drive was last
seen on March 24, 2009, and may possibly contain personally identifiable
information such as names, addresses and social security numbers.
This incident really demonstrates one of the critical flaws
of tape unencrypted storage. Today, theft of backup media constitutes one of
the leading means for hackers to obtain private information. That’s why it’s so
critical that, regardless of your backup strategy, you must use some sort of
encryption process to protect your backups.
As businesses are becoming more aware of the threat, many
are starting to look at alternatives to the traditional tape, external hard
drive, and DVD backup methods that had been the standard methodology in the
past.
Today, more and more companies and individuals are opting to
switch their data protection to a secure online backup provider. Not only does
this new methodology prevent theft incidents such as this one, but it also has
other side benefits as well.
With online backup, there is no need to maintain, upgrade or
manually operate the backup systems. Instead, the process is completely
automated. This can save a lot of time and money for the companies in question.
In addition, online backup also increases security by
minimizing backup windows through Continuous Data Protection algorithms, and
reduces recovery times by giving instant access to critical business data in
case of an emergency.
If your organization has ever been concerned about possible
data theft resulting from a manual backup process, you may want to look into
some sort of online backup solution for your business continuity and disaster
recovery.
If more people start handling their backups and archives in
a more secure manner, there will hopefully be fewer of these types of incidents
in the future.
About The Writer Of This Article:
Storagepipe Solutions has been providing secure disaster
recovery solutions that include online backup, email archiving and more.
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