KEEP DATA SAFE

Phil Goodwin, IDC Research Vice President, explained in a recent interview, “In survey after survey that we conduct with IT organizations [about data storage priorities] ransomware and data security are always at the top of the list or very close … and the reason is [because] ransomware can have a profound effect on an organization.” As reported in the 2021 Sophos State of Ransomware Survey “The average bill for rectifying a ransomware attack, considering downtime, people time, device cost, network cost, lost opportunity, ransom paid etc. was US$1.85 million.”

As we can see, keeping data safe is a critical priority. Many have said that it is not if but when an organization will experience a ransomware attack. Therefore, protecting data and being able to effectively recover from an attack is crucial to protecting company assets. How to best protect the data? Air-gap it! LTO technology offers the ultimate air-gap data protection. 

Let’s see how this works:  when an LTO data cartridge is removed from the tape drive it is offline and there is a physical gap created, an air-gap, between the data cartridge and the systems. This makes it virtually impossible for the data to be accessed by a cyberattack. The protected LTO data cartridge can then be used to restore online data that has been compromised. Furthermore, the data can be additionally protected with LTO data encryption technology just in case the cartridge was to get into the wrong hands.

MAKE IT GREEN

Businesses have become reliant on data to make critical business decisions, support customer service and to stay competitive; therefore, organizations are storing more data for longer periods of time. In a recent white paper ESG assessed the effect LTO technology could have in providing sustainable data storage solutions. The paper noted, “with stored data growing exponentially year-over-year, many organizations are looking for technologies to reduce their energy consumption and carbon footprints … [they] could save on energy consumption, CO2 emission, and disposal costs in their production storage environments by adding tape as a storage tier and replacing spinning HDDs with tape media for the less active data.”