Data Recovery Digest

Kroll Ontrack has compiled a list of the top trends in data recovery in 2014. Some of the most popular trends involved mobile devices, security and continuity, so let’s take a look at the rundown.

Security

The news was full of companies having their data maliciously accessed this year. One of the largest came towards the end of the year as Sony employees found themselves locked out of their computers and company data stolen.

The number of businesses that needed on-site support to ensure that their data didn’t leave the company doubled from 2013 to 2014. Hundreds of government, educational and healthcare institutions also required the use of remote data recovery – meaning the data can be recovered without the drive leaving the high-security facility that it’s stored in.

“From viruses such as CryptoLocker to mass cybersecurity attacks, security protocols were a high-profile concern for corporations in 2014,” said Paul Le Messurier, programme and operations manager at Kroll Ontrack.

Encryption

Encrypting your data is a great step to take to add an extra layer of protection to your data. Many companies were looking to prevent unauthorised access to their data. Although it’s usual for companies to want to recover their data, some also wanted to make sure such a procedure was impossible.

This is because companies were testing to ensure that if the drive was retired or repurposed that the data once stored on it wouldn’t be able to be recovered. As such, organisations were testing and tightening their encryption and data erasure procedures.

Collaboration

Collaboration is important in the data recovery industry. If recovery providers and drive manufacturers work together then it enables quicker and more successful recovery. For example, Kroll Ontrack partnered with SanDisk in order to reduce the time it takes to find drive failures.

“New drives and innovative data storage technologies are being developed all the time,” said Le Messurier. “These new technologies mean new proprietary data recovery tools and processes need to be developed to address the latest drive architectures.”

Portable

From 2013 to 2014 recovery requests increased by 42 percent for phones, 69 percent for tablets, 13 percent for flash media and 48 percent for SSDs. As the world continues to be increasingly portable, it means that a lot of personal data is actually being stored on these types of devices rather than a computer.

While many backup their home computers, often devices like phones and tablets are forgotten about. But when these are now acting as cameras, portable work machines, and more, it’s vital that a backup plan is put into place for these too.

In 2014, Kroll Ontrack developed the ability to repair the operating system and access data for Apple devices, including those which are hardware encrypted.

Software defined storage

There was an increase in software defined storage failures in 2014. Despite some storage manufacturers saying recovery isn’t possible if a backup doesn’t exist, the software defined storage maps can actually be rebuilt and data can be recovered from that point in time.

However, it is massively important that backups and snapshots are tested. It’s all well and good to actually backup your data, but you might realise when it’s too late that the backups aren’t actually working.