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Published:
Is
Your Data Safe?
©2002
"Hurricane Elmo just made a left turn and hit Charleston,
South Carolina, with wind speeds of
185 miles per hour. We expect
damage to be extensive. Fortunately,
Charleston was evacuated, so there will
be few casualties."
 You
turn off the radio and sigh. The
wind has been unbearable all day, and
now it looks like your hometown will
get the brunt of the hurricane.
The next day, you make your way back
home and find moderate damage, but repairable.
A look at your agency's office
building, however, is devastating. Right
in the path of the storm surge and in
a virtual wind tunnel, the water line
of King Street was up to four feet
before receding. When you are
allowed inside, you find all of your
customers' core files are wet and disintegrating,
your computers shorted out or dead,
and your carpeting smelling of rancid
saltwater.
But you are not out of business yet.
You go to higher ground and find
that a few businesses are dry and have
phone service. After arranging
a rental of some temporary space, you
set up your laptop and connect to the
Internet. A few keystrokes later,
your programs and data are running
and waiting, and you are ready to process
the mountain of claims you know are
coming..
You know now that you made the right
decision. The Application Service Provider
saved your agency.
There could have been a much different
ending, one filled with anger, scrambling,
waiting, and perhaps bankruptcy. There
is virtually no part of the country
that does not have a potential for disaster.
How safe is your data?
Another example: The riots
leave your office stripped bare. You
took home a  backup
tape just two days ago, so you won't
lose much data. A trip to your
computer store the next day provides
you with a new computer and tape drive
with which to restore your files. You
insert the tape cartridge and run the
Restore Wizard provided by the backup
software. You can't understand
why the list of files on the tape is
blank. You try three , four, five times
and finally call the Support Department.
"Sorry, it looks like the
backup didn't take."
One of the common objections we hear
when selling the ASP concept is that
agency owners don't want to give up
immediate control of their data files.
It is not always easy to convince
them that their data is actually safer
with a reputable ASP. One of the
benefits an ASP has over individual
companies with small data centers or
even larger networks is the ability
to share the cost of redundancy and
security over a large number of users. Redundancy,
or duplication of equipment, can be
expensive, and backups are notoriously
unreliable.
 Perhaps
agency owners should think of client
data as just that, their clients'
data. Whether it is housed in the
agency's own office or elsewhere, it
is their responsibility to make sure
that it is in the best hands. Insurance
agents ask their customers to look forward
and try to foresee potential losses
but many times fail to do that for themselves.
Data is information. Whether
on stone tablet, papaya scrolls, leather
binders, hardback books, facsimiles,
text messages or digital documents,
untimely loss of that information can
have significant consequences. New
technology has made gathering of information
fast and easy, but has simultaneously
made safe storage and retrieval difficult
and costly.
If you have any questions, feel free to email me at jack@worldpointinc.com.
Note:
WorldPOINT articles are copyrighted and the exclusive property
of WorldPOINT Inc. and author Jack Huber. They may be copied
or reproduced by non-ASP's and non-competitors only in their
entirety with no modifications, including the source and
byline, and distributed without charge or financial gain.
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