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Human error responsible for increase in enterprise data loss

depleted resources and corner-cutting culture causing wave of incoming requests

November 18, 2009

An increasing number of enterprise-level data disasters can be attributed to human error, according to Kroll Ontrack.

The firm’s Ontrack® Data Recovery experts are attributing the trend to more complex storage systems coupled with depleted resources to replace equipment, train IT staff and maintain optimum staffing levels.

The most common enterprise human error cases Kroll Ontrack sees include:

· Pulling the wrong drive – while trying to replace a failed disk in a RAID array, a healthy disk is accidently removed

· Reformatting a disk – during a server migration, the wrong SAN LUN is accidently reformatted

· Restoring corrupt/redundant backup data – a server containing a business-critical database is deleted by mistake and is restored with a corrupt or incomplete backup, prior to realising the backup is not sound

· Rebuilding a bad array – following a multiple drive failure in a RAID array, an attempt to force the failed drives back online and rebuild the configuration is made – damaging or corrupting the data on the array

· Deleting data – files, volumes, virtual machines or a SAN LUN is deleted by accident and there is no backup or the backup is redundant or corrupt

“While advanced storage options such as virtualisation and cloud computing offer corporations storage optimisation, human processes are still at the root of these solutions, instructing the technology as to how to perform,” said Phil Bridge, managing director, Kroll Ontrack UK. “The complexity of these systems often requires a steep learning curve. With reported IT spending at a low,[1] human error is increasingly common.”

Examples of human error cases and subsequent enterprise data recoveries by Kroll Ontrack in 2009 include:

· A support engineer forgot to turn off his replication software before formatting the volumes on the primary site. Unfortunately, this mistake resulted in overwriting the backup.

· An organisation using a 10 drive RAID 5 array suffered a drive failure that went unnoticed for three months. When a second drive died, the server crashed, rendering all data unavailable. Before attempting to force the drives back online and ultimately corrupt all the data on the volume, the customer called Kroll Ontrack. Ontrack Data Recovery engineers rebuilt the array, making a full recovery possible.

· An organisation accidently ran a script during a test project that deleted all 38 virtual machines from two arrays. Kroll Ontrack was able to connect to the organisation remotely and recover the deleted data while also copying the virtual machines to a new array.

· A company leasing cloud computers accidentally detached a “virtual” storage volume in the cloud environment – similar to pulling a cable from an operational volume. When it was reconnected, Windows reported the volume as unallocated space, so the volume could not be mounted. Using Kroll Ontrack’s proprietary Remote Data Recovery™ service, Ontrack Data Recovery engineers were able to repair the damaged cloud storage volume, getting the development company back up and running in four hours.

· Twenty VMFS volumes were “quick initialised” on a backup server. While the virtual machines and ESX servers continued to run, the backup server stopped operating. Rebooting the ESX risked downtime and data loss. Kroll Ontrack was able to rebuild the deleted virtual disks and recover 100 percent of the data within 24 hours.

1] Worldwide enterprise IT spending down 6.9 per cent in 2009 according to Gartner

About the company

About Ontrack Data Recovery

Through its Ontrack Data Recovery products and services, Kroll Ontrack is the largest, most experienced and technologically advanced provider of data recovery products and services worldwide. Using its hundreds of proprietary tools and techniques, Ontrack Data Recovery helps businesses and consumers recover lost or corrupted data from all types of operating systems and media and storage devices through its do-it-yourself, remote and in-lab capabilities. Kroll Ontrack offers a free initial consultation for customers experiencing a data loss.

About Kroll Ontrack Inc.
Kroll Ontrack provides technology-driven services and software to help legal, corporate and government entities as well as consumers recover, search, analyse, produce and present data efficiently and cost-effectively. In addition to its award-winning suite of software, Kroll Ontrack provides data recovery, advanced search, paper and electronic discovery, computer forensics, ESI consulting, and trial consulting and presentation services. Kroll Ontrack is a technology services division of Kroll Inc., the global risk consulting company.

Contact details

For further information and enquiries, please contact:
Alex Clough at LEWIS, the PR agency
Tel: +44 (0) 161 457 2050 Fax: +44 (0) 161 457 2051
Email: krollontrackuk@lewispr.com
Website: www.lewispr.com

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Human error responsible for increase in enterprise data loss

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