The more organizations rely on technology to perform business functions, the easier it is to forget that the devices relied upon to store and protect information sometimes fail unexpectedly. Hardware malfunctions, natural disasters, power outages and human error can all cause stored information to be lost or damaged, highlighting the need for reliable disaster recovery and business continuity policies.
For example, this week a government audit of the United States Postal Service revealed that the agency lost important data after a device carrying both original and backup files suffered a hardware failure and erased the information. Current Postal Service security standards do not require that duplicate copies of files be stored separately from the originals.
The lost files were part of the database for the Computer Incident Response Team and used to record and maintain computer incidents that occurred within the agency. The hardware malfunction that caused the files to be deleted happened sometime in April of this year. Luckily, though, not all of the database information was lost, as USPS maintained an archive of paper copies of the incident reports that contained some of the data that was deleted.
"The requirement was for us to have this information," said USPS chief security officer Chuck McGann in an interview with FedScoop. "We had the information. We pointed them to the five file cabinets where we have physical copies of all of the incidents."
While USPS's data management team backs up information the agency deems critical in offsite facilities, the CIRT database was considered to be essential and not critical, so it was not moved to a secondary storage location.
Employ FoIP for online backups
Companies looking to implement disaster recovery and business continuity solutions should consider utilizing fax-over-IP services to back up files in the cloud. FoIP services send faxes over the Internet and store the transmitted messages on a dedicated cloud server. This creates an encrypted, searchable archive of records that can be kept for as long as necessary and can serve as a backup database should the original digital files be deleted or if the physical paper copies are damaged or lost.
Organizations that already use a traditional fax machine can retrofit it to become FoIP-capable with FaxCore's etherFAX service. Fax-over-IP solutions can be integrated with an office's existing Internet connection, making FoIP the obvious choice for enterprise disaster recovery and online file backup.
Enhance enterprise communication and secure file sharing for business with a proven FoIP solution from FaxCore. Contact FaxCore today to learn more about their 'Partly-Cloudy' fax solutions.
