Introduction

The loss of a laptop containing medical records for 5,000 people was just one of a drip-feed of data privacy breach news stories in the past year. Public sector incidents alone led to over 37 million UK citizens having their personal data lost or stolen.

The leakage of 25 million child benefit records at HMRC last November was the world’s 5th largest reported data loss incident. With incidents at the DVLA, the MoD, NHS and US Government agencies, it seemed the issue of lax data security was a public sector problem.

But private enterprise also grabbed headlines in 2007, dubbed “The worst ever year for data protection” by website The Register. TK Maxx lost 5 million UK credit card records, Monster.com had details of 3 million customers taken, at loans.co.uk 250,000 private customer records were stolen & sold and Leeds Building Society lost data on its entire workforce.

Commercial Concerns

Loss of customer data is not the only worry in the private sector. A rising tide in Merger & Acquisitions and intensely competitive market has flagged the protection of commercially sensitive data as an equally strong concern.

Company directors and senior public officials are now taking steps to review policies, implement sensitive data procedures and assess the risks of their organisations losing private or commercially sensitive data. Sectors at high risk include Retail, Financial Services, Utilities and Professional Services.

Legislation & Standards

Protecting customers’ data privacy and that of the company not only makes sound business sense but is also becoming the subject of industry, government & EU regulation. According to security consultancy Vigitrust, laws such as the European Union Data Protection Directive and equivalent U.S. regulations have resulted in information security becoming a board level action item.

It would be a mistake for UK & European organisations to ignore U.S. legislation in this area as it may also be binding on companies trading with US consumers. Regulations such as California Senate Bill 1386 apply to “any person or business that conducts business in California” even if they are located outside the U.S.

Many organisations are pursuing ISO 27001 accreditation, the Information Security Standard (formerly BS7799). Larger retailers are striving to meet the Payments Card Industry (PCI) standard pioneered by Visa & MasterCard to address identity theft.

The public sector responded to its ‘annus horibilis’ by mandating data encryption on all laptops, but also by disseminating Information Governance standards on data privacy to all public bodies and practical assistance such as the ‘Information Governance Toolkits’.

Risk mitigation software vendor The Irish company, best known for detecting & reporting on illicit image abuse, has been conducting ‘Discovery Audits’ to detect unprotected sensitive data on company networks since 2007; its auditors found such unprotected data in over 36% of all IT resources scanned, including 46% of PCs, 32% of e-mail accounts and 30% of file servers. In each case, it required at least 20 instances of suspected privacy data to be detected in a document before being logged as ’suspect’.

Risk assessment - Where to start?

Best practice begins with a risk assessment to detect actual data breaches or the existence of ‘data at risk’. In order to help corporations gain visibility of this risk, The Irish company offers a complimentary ‘Discovery Audit’ to detect and report on the presence of sensitive data at rest.

The Irish company Privacy Auditor software will scan for sensitive data such as Credit Card, Bank Account or National Insurance numbers, encryption keys etc. held in plain text on e-mail, desktop PCs, laptops and file servers. The Irish company Privacy Auditor can, on request, remove or encrypt such data for the client.

During this engagement, the organisation may nominate specific sensitive data or documents to be detected on its network, such as commercially sensitive financial data. A comprehensive report is delivered, together with suitable recommendations.

With the public focus on risk & compliance in the treatment of sensitive data, an early risk assessment is now considered the essential starting point to protecting the best interests of taxpayers, customers, companies and ordinary citizens alike.



Thanks to Colm Doherty for contributing this article to our Data Recovery blog:

Raid Data Recovery Software

In today’s fast moving commercial environment, we all know how reliant we are on computer systems, and more importantly the information contained within them. It is hard to think of the old days, no mobile phones, fax machines, or internet. Manual paper based systems have long since been replaced and the format changed to digital.  With these changes, in real terms hardware costs have reduced dramatically, data storage costs have came down massively - all fuelling the additional use and reliance on our IT systems.

Whilst it is true that a computer system is only as good as the data held within it, most modern systems on the whole are very reliable, but every now and then problems can occur. Data on a computer system is held on a hard drive. This device is a mechanical magnetic device with platters spinning at thousands of revolutions per minute. A mechanical read/write head moves over the platters to retrieve and store information. As the hard drive becomes older, the possibility of failure increases.  What procedures do you have in place in the event of this happening?  Hopefully something other than keeping your fingers crossed!

 

A peer to peer network consists of a number of computers networked together, each working as part of a group, each with their own hard drives containing their own programs and information, but sharing resources and information throughout the group. If one individual computer on the network fails, it may not be a disaster, but it certainly could be an inconvenience if data contained within it is lost.

 

A client server network has a central file server containing the most important programs and data, with clients or workstations requesting information from the central server. Due to the nature of this network structure, backup considerations are paramount. If data failure occurs on this network file server, then all users stop working. In real terms, this type of operation and its reliance is similar to a company that runs on a standalone computer, obviously in bigger terms. If the main computer or server goes down, the computing resource goes down.

 

There are many different options for data backup available. Choosing the correct backup system can make a massive difference in determining what happens should a data problem occur. If you choose the wrong type of backup system, or choose something that is inadequate, then at some point in time headaches and problems are going to occur.

 

3.5″ Floppy Disk Drive

Pretty much a thing of the past, although computers that have been in operation for a number of years may occasionally still use this format for data backup. These disks are pretty much inadequate nowadays, they only store 1.44MB of data and are slow and quite unreliable.

 

CD-RW Disk Drive

Probably the entry level format for data backup. CD’s are very cheap, easily available and can store up to 700MB of data on-board. Handy for backing up a section of data, but due to the size limitation of 700MB, it is unlikely that anyone would ever attempt a full system backup using this format, or even make this their primary backup format.

 

DVD-RW Disk Drive

Very similar to CD-RW and also very cheap, but using DVD’s instead, giving much increased capacity, with standard DVD’s coping with 4.7GB of data. Double layer disks store up to 8.5GB and again are a cheap option.

 

USB Data Key

Simple small key drives which fit into USB ports to give a temporary extra drive; these are very handy and portable with sizes up to 32GB available now.

 

Tape Drive

Travan drives, Micro-DV Tape and DAT are the most common. Travan drives are slower with less storage capability. DAT tapes come in a couple of sizes - 4mm and 8mm tapes which store up to 40GB. On the whole, DAT drives are reliable, but care must be taken to rotate backup tapes and keep the drive clean. With this format being mechanical in nature, along with other storage devices, they can fail as they become older or through extensive use. Because they tend only to be installed on the central file server, care must be taken across the rest of the network to make sure any locally stored data on workstations is additionally backed up if necessary.

Online Secure Backup  With the introduction of high-speed internet technology, it has become increasingly popular for companies to store data remotely. A piece of software is added to the system which is configured by the administrator to backup certain files. These files are securely encrypted and the online backup system then sends the data over the internet to secure remote data centres. Instead of expensive drives and multiple tapes needing to be added to a system, and an operator being responsible for changing daily tapes and organising a routine, the online backup system automatically sends the information at pre-determined times. This eliminates the chance of operator error and sends logs confirming successful operation, or if any errors have occurred. Costs are normally charged on a backup size basis, and tend to be very competitive. Because the system is software driven as opposed to hardware, it is very easy to integrate multiple systems, and can include laptops, remote workers, and external hard drives. Physical security issues, operator mistakes, and device failures are greatly reduced with this method, there are no tapes to remove off site, and restoration of data is fast and easy - whether a single file or a complete system recovery. If you are considering updating computer systems, or looking at your overall data disaster recovery plan, then online backup should certainly be a consideration.



Thanks to Andrew Beatt for contributing this article to our Data Recovery blog:

Hard Drive Crash Recovery Software

Today, computers have become one of the most significant parts of our life. There are a number of people throughout this world whose businesses simply can not survive without the great computing technology.

Those people regularly work and convey through their computer systems. They store a large amount of critical data and information on their computer hard drives. When their computer system especially due to storage failure halts, it would appear like the world have undermined on them.

Technically, every computer hard drive may cease to work with the due course of time. A computer hard drive is just a hardware component that could face fatigue with constant use, mishandling, time span and the most daunting of all, the interference of various level viruses, which have the ability to ruin the computer system.

Fortunately you can actually avoid the hard drive crash. However, these ways and means of preventing hard drive crashes are not completely fool proof because there are few factors, which can not be controlled at all. Let’s look at the bright side of the facts.

Ø As for the malicious programs like viruses, you could install a powerful anti virus software. It can detect and remove the viruses from your computer.

Ø Keep your system in cool surroundings for better heat dissipation as overheating may damage your hard drive and thus can lead to data loss.

Ø Regularly defragment your hard drive. Extensive fragmentation of files on hard drive could cause file system corruption.

These are some protective steps, which could help you in preventing the hard drive failure, either logical or physical, and may save your critical data. But even if after taking the protective measures the hard drive fails we may face uneasy situations.

Although, it is very hard to accept data loss but it does happen. You should not panic in such situations as hard drive recovery is here for our rescue. The hard drive recovery is the process of extracting inaccessible, missing or lost data from your damaged or failed hard drive.

In case of physical damage to the hard drive, you need to take the help of hard drive recovery service. It is personalized help offered by data recovery companies to handle physically damaged hard drive and retrieve data from them. The hard drive recovery service requires sophisticated tools and great expertise to conclude the process with up to hundred percent success rates.

The other type of hard drive failure could be logical. It is apparently easy to handle and can be taken care off by the user like a home user itself. The logical hard drive recovery can easily be performed with the help of third party applications known as data recovery software. The data recovery software are easy to use applications, which allow us all to have ‘Do It Yourself’ hard drive recovery.

Stellar Information Systems Limited is the most trustworthy and foremost provider of quality data recovery software and personalized hard drive recovery service. Stellar offers all the solutions related to backup, logical recovery and physical recovery created and offered in its dedicated and specialized units. Stellar data recovery software can handle all the logical data loss posers and hard drive recovery service is available for all sorts of hard drive to solve the cases of physical damage like other firm does.



Thanks to Andrew Juan for contributing this article to our Data Recovery blog:

Best Data Recovery Services

Hard Drive Recovery – a phrase guaranteed to strike fear into the hearts of most Computer Technicians (or would do if most of them really knew what it meant) but what causes it and what can be done either to prevent it or certainly to make sure it is handled and remedied correctly.

We can all picture the scenario, a hard pressed systems technician or home worker, up against a deadline to deliver a project in on time or under budget sits back, presses the enter button and……zippo, nada, nothing or even worse than that, the entire system juts flashes up the computer equivalent of “Gone to lunch, back whenever.”

If you have never been in that situation (and haven’t we all at some time or other) then believe me as someone who speaks from battle hardened experience then I can guarantee you that medical science has discovered no laxative quite like this. Boy, the phrase “losing ones lunch” conjures up a whole new image. Not pretty I can assure you.

The answer to all of this is usually quite simple. Back up your data more often and take better care of the equipment you use and hopefully it will take better care of you (or so the story goes) but sometimes it is not that simple.

Data loss can occur for a number of reasons and the five most common are “Hardware Malfunction” and this accounts for 44% (allegedly) of all Data loss situations. Next there is “User Error” and this accounts for about 32% of all data loss. An amusing euphemism for this was once used by one of my colleagues when describing a particular client one day, he went on to describe the source of the problem as being an “interface problem occurring between the keyboard and the chair!”

In approximately 14% of the cases, the data loss occurs through software corruption, Computer Viruses account for 7 % and the remaining 3% occur through what can best be described as “Natural Disasters”.

However in most cases and if dealt with correctly i.e. talking to the right people the situation does not necessarily require or dictate that the perpetrator immediately reach for an old rusty razor blade, meaning that is a lot of cases the problem can be fixed to some degree or other.

Don’t let me build false hopes entirely. If you are in position whereby you do think you have lost data then the first thing you do have to do is talk to someone who knows what they are talking about but accept there will be a certain amount of “collateral” damage in the attempt at restoring your lost data. Sometimes this occurs when the lab you are dealing with encounters formatting issues with hard disks etc and these are unavoidable. However in situations like this you will usually find that the core data recovered (even if a little strange in layout) is at least usable.

So just when you think that all is lost, it need not be the case, in the case of Data Recovery; you just need to know to talk to right people.



Thanks to Stephen Morgan for contributing this article to our Data Recovery blog:

Cd Data Recovery