Mass Data Protection & Recovery

Hi Everyone,

When you are looking for a backup service, make sure you know what you’re comparing.  Here is my top 10 ways to make an informed choice.  Sorry Mr. Letterman!

1. Where is your data stored?  No location compares with the original “Iron Mountain” and the secondary “Class A” data centers used by Iron Mountain.
2. Who has access to it?  Believe it or not, some companies actually retain the right to review your data and even limit your access to it if they determine it’s prohibited.  Could you imagine a service provider rummaging through your data?  I wouldn’t keep my data there.  National Data Protect and Iron Mountain Digital cannot scan your information - you keep your encryption key and no-one but you can access it.
3. What kind of encryption is used and where?  You have to make sure that your data is protected all through the process, not just during transmission.  NDP protects with 256 bit AES encryption it from the time the delta is selected, through transmission and even on the destination drives.  There actually are some companies that send your restored data back to you on a CD or external hard drive in a completely open way.  Irresponsible at best!
4. Is the service backing up deltas or on a file basis?  Deltas can make the backup and restore process significantly more efficient and they minimize the bandwidth required to transmit and receive.  Compression can help make delta backups even faster.
5. Is the restore process truly web based?  Would you be surprised to know that some companies allow you to select the files to restore and then send you a CD?
6. How is the price truly calculated?  NDP / IM digital charge you for the data you are backing up.  For example, if you are backing up 5 GB for a 30 day retention at $10.45 per GB per month ($52.25 per month) - it doesn’t matter if the over 230 version actually take 100 GB you still pay only for the 5GB that comprises the files being backed up.  Many competitors charge a lower per GB per month price only to charge you for the back end usage - the same 5GB with a 30 day retention but billed at the back end GB size can quickly and permanently go well above what you expect to pay.
7. Is the service geared towards consumers?  When protecting your critical business data, consumer solutions will not protect you the way you really need - and that’s not something you want to find out after a file, email container, database or other data is lost.
   
8. Everyone hates contracts.  Why lock yourself in for between one and three years?  NDP is a month-to-month service.  What will happen when you start getting billed for that back end utilization at a much higher monthly rate than you expected?  Good luck with that!
9. What regulations and professional requirements are they compliant with?  Ask about Sarb-Ox, SAS-70, PCI & HIPAA.
10. Is there a limit on the size of individual files?  It would really stink if your 1.5 GB Outlook PST file isn’t able to be backed up!
    

That’s my top ten.  Suffice it to say that from just about every aspect, the National Data Protect / Iron Mountain Digital LiveVault service is the best solution for your most important business asset - your data.

Later!
John

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 7th, 2008 at 9:49 pm and is filed under Cost Comparison. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.