Data Recovery Digest

The cloud, for a lot of users, is a wonderful thing. It allows you to store your data off-site, online, and take advantage of all the benefits that brings. Whether it is minimising costs, maximising efficiency or just being able to access your data easily from all devices, many businesses are now turning to the cloud.

However, the growing trend of storing data in the cloud is causing some problems for IT technicians globally, with companies needing to recover their data quickly, but it being hard to locate within the cloud.

The confidence in the cloud is rising, both in security and the benefits offered, which means some companies are putting their secondary data, perhaps once stored on-site on hard drives, to the cloud.

With this mixture of storage, both locally and in the cloud, it can cause issues when it comes to data recovery. It can become difficult to determine where that data was actually stored, which complicates the procedure and slows it down.

MicroScope report that a source claims that most customers are using the cloud to make a copy of production data and that live activities run from the cloud were mainly for testing and development purposes. However, that may change in the future.

Kroll Ontrack, a recovery firm, has stated that the cloud is just one issue facing those who have to attempt data recovery. They also cite the lack of a universal SSD wiping standard and the expansion of BYOD as further factors that could cause issues.

“As storage drives continue to grow in size and intricacy so does the risk associated with storing data. We predict that SSD and HDD drives will increase in popularity in 2014, but the complexity of how they store data will also compromise people’s ability to erase data or recover it when things go wrong,” said Paul Le Messurier, the data recovery operations manager at Kroll Ontrack in the UK.

“We predict a subsequent rise in demand for our services next year to support these users. Another trend will be a rise in recoveries for online cloud and on smartphones - particularly in workplaces adopting BYOD and CYOD policies,” he continued.

Many businesses are now implementing clear policies that deal with the issues that cloud storage brings. For example, an employee using their smartphone for business tasks has a whole range of security implications – taking sensitive company information outside of the business infrastructure is a risky one.

These companies are working on backup plans to deal with what they believe are the inevitable problems that will occur with data security. One part of this plan could be to secure a relationship with a professional data recovery company.

“Businesses should ensure they have an adequate back up plan in place in 2014 to cope with the inevitable problems that will impact data security. Establishing a relationship with a data recovery expert should also be a priority for administrators that lack the knowledge and expertise to support the challenges of new innovations,” said Le Messurier.