Bankruptcies and Unemployment Prompt the Question - "Where Does All the Data Go?"
I had a friendly, yet disturbing, conversation with an acquaintance who happens to be a local bankruptcy attorney and trustee. (Boy, how his world has changed recently.) We started off just catching up (my business - not so good; his business - unfortunately very good). The conversation then moved to a local bank that had recently been shut down by the FDIC, and how the ramifications of its failure are being felt by individuals and businesses.
My attorney friend told me of a developer who had to shut down his company because it was financed by the bank. This started a domino effect. The developer could not pay off all his subcontractors what they were owed and now his subcontractors are making appointments with bankruptcy attorneys because they can't pay their bills. Until he told me this story, I had never really considered the trickle down effect that bank failures like this could have on those around us.
The conversation then turned in my direction. The attorney asked me, "What happens with all the electronic data and records that, for example, the failed bank kept on its servers?" He also inquired about all of those "corporate" folks that are being laid off. "What happens to their data that might be on their laptops that they bring home from work? Or keep at home if they work remotely?"
So I spent a solid half hour explaining all the various ways data can be saved, stored, archived, and recovered if necessary. It was a fairly high-level discussion (this guy was a bankruptcy attorney after all....his computer skills were basically limited to surfing the Internet and Microsoft Office applications) but it got me to thinking.
There are now millions of people out of work, and more by the day. Individually, there is a ton of valuable data produced, stored and maybe even backed up somewhere if the IT folks are on the ball. In fact, according to the Gartner Group, 97.3% of all data beginning as far back as 2000 was electronic in format but what happens to it all? Can the data be turned back into something useful for the mother ship? Maybe most importantly, what are the legal ramifications of an employee's data when they still have their data but no longer work at the company?
I had to do a little research and brush up on some of the important laws regarding retention of data. For this discussion, there are two laws that are pertinent:
So, now I better realize there are these rules those companies must follow when they fire people. Their data has go somewhere, it better be safe, and it better be around 5 or 10 years from now in case some lawyer comes nosing around or some judge asks for it.
Enterprise organizations need to be especially attuned to this need and have the backend infrastructure to store all of this data. Permabit Enterprise Archive is a good example of a scalable solution for storing data for eDiscovery, litigation holds, or even plain-old compliance. Using a backup of data is not really conducive for eDiscovery since it's very difficult to find all of the data you need and next to impossible to perform a system-wide federated search.
By this, I mean searching and gathering data from disparate places such as server-based storage, SAN/NAS storage, laptops and PCs, etc. Further, the type of data itself can have numerous forms - structured, semi-structured and unstructured - that each have different search and storage requirements. However, an online disk archiving solution like the Enterprise Archive can allow for a true federated search across multiple systems and afford enterprise organizations the flexibility to store as much data as they need as long as they need it.
As my conversation with my attorney friend illustrated, even though everything may be hunky dory right now with you or your company, the future can be (and is) a slippery slope. So enterprise companies in particular need to put in place scalable, cost-effective mechanisms to keep and retain their data when the future does not look so bright, which is the case for far too many of these size organizations right now. In these circumstances, it makes a lot of sense to protect your data with a solution like Permabit's Enterprise Archive.
My attorney friend told me of a developer who had to shut down his company because it was financed by the bank. This started a domino effect. The developer could not pay off all his subcontractors what they were owed and now his subcontractors are making appointments with bankruptcy attorneys because they can't pay their bills. Until he told me this story, I had never really considered the trickle down effect that bank failures like this could have on those around us.
The conversation then turned in my direction. The attorney asked me, "What happens with all the electronic data and records that, for example, the failed bank kept on its servers?" He also inquired about all of those "corporate" folks that are being laid off. "What happens to their data that might be on their laptops that they bring home from work? Or keep at home if they work remotely?"
So I spent a solid half hour explaining all the various ways data can be saved, stored, archived, and recovered if necessary. It was a fairly high-level discussion (this guy was a bankruptcy attorney after all....his computer skills were basically limited to surfing the Internet and Microsoft Office applications) but it got me to thinking.
There are now millions of people out of work, and more by the day. Individually, there is a ton of valuable data produced, stored and maybe even backed up somewhere if the IT folks are on the ball. In fact, according to the Gartner Group, 97.3% of all data beginning as far back as 2000 was electronic in format but what happens to it all? Can the data be turned back into something useful for the mother ship? Maybe most importantly, what are the legal ramifications of an employee's data when they still have their data but no longer work at the company?
I had to do a little research and brush up on some of the important laws regarding retention of data. For this discussion, there are two laws that are pertinent:
- The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is specifically related to document retention. The Act states the following: "A failure to maintain audit or review of work papers for at least five years is punishable by up to five years in prison, and/or a fine."
- SEC Rule 17a requires that certain business records and communications be readily accessible for two years and at least accessible for a year after that. It further requires that transaction-related records and communications be kept and accessible for seven years after the event.
So, now I better realize there are these rules those companies must follow when they fire people. Their data has go somewhere, it better be safe, and it better be around 5 or 10 years from now in case some lawyer comes nosing around or some judge asks for it.
Enterprise organizations need to be especially attuned to this need and have the backend infrastructure to store all of this data. Permabit Enterprise Archive is a good example of a scalable solution for storing data for eDiscovery, litigation holds, or even plain-old compliance. Using a backup of data is not really conducive for eDiscovery since it's very difficult to find all of the data you need and next to impossible to perform a system-wide federated search.
By this, I mean searching and gathering data from disparate places such as server-based storage, SAN/NAS storage, laptops and PCs, etc. Further, the type of data itself can have numerous forms - structured, semi-structured and unstructured - that each have different search and storage requirements. However, an online disk archiving solution like the Enterprise Archive can allow for a true federated search across multiple systems and afford enterprise organizations the flexibility to store as much data as they need as long as they need it.
As my conversation with my attorney friend illustrated, even though everything may be hunky dory right now with you or your company, the future can be (and is) a slippery slope. So enterprise companies in particular need to put in place scalable, cost-effective mechanisms to keep and retain their data when the future does not look so bright, which is the case for far too many of these size organizations right now. In these circumstances, it makes a lot of sense to protect your data with a solution like Permabit's Enterprise Archive.
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