Managed Services
Fire Shows Need to Back Up Digital Public Record
By Bill Bachenberg
On July 29, the Whitehall municipal building was ablaze, the suspected cause a lightning strike; but did lightning strike twice, at least symbolically?
There was fire, smoke, and water damage, but the secondary damage to the township’s ability to serve the people of Whitehall can be the far more significant impact. We were pleased to see, first and foremost, no one was hurt and that the township of Whitehall took measures to protect files through the use of fireproof cabinets; but fireproof cabinets are not necessarily always waterproof and work in progress is not always in the fireproof cabinets — especially work being done on desktop computers.
Files and records are the foundation of most government facilities. Due to cost in years past, municipalities could be expected only to employ fireproof cabinets and, maybe, off-site storage. With reductions in the cost of technology, it is now feasible for municipalities and small to medium business alike to scan all documents as they are received and electronically replicate the documents at the time to an offsite facility. This ensures that work in progress is backed up hourly or daily to an off-site facility that can be brought into use in less than an hour if needed to serve those who depend on the municipality or company for services or products.
Governments at all levels are moving further into the digital world to improve productivity and comply with federal and state requirements. Biometrics, public records, and on-line public services such as tax payment and zoning requests are all in evolutional stages within local and state governments. It will not be long before fireproof cabinets will no longer be needed due to electronic authentication technologies being universally accepted as equivalents to an original signature.
In this new world, the loss of a single 100 gigabyte disk drive, common place within most desktop and laptop computers, can have a devastating effect on a community if best practices are not employed to ensure the data is protected, secured, and remotely replicated. For example, such a hard drive holds approximately 25,000 images. They could be public record photos of real estate or high-resolution scans of legal documents. A single desktop server being destroyed during a fire may be the equivalent of a town hall burning down in the early 20th century.
It is essential, as our local and state authorities move forward with automation and digitization projects, that they pull upon experts in the private and public sector to get it right the first time. Otherwise, they will have to make time and find public monies to do it again. In a 2006 MasterCard survey of small to medium businesses they found 77 percent were not fully prepared for a disaster. Traditionally, small to medium municipalities are even less prepared than the private sector.
In the next few weeks, the damage will be assessed and the impact will be known relating to this fire. It is our hope Whitehall will fare well, but this is a wake-up call that a man-made or natural disaster can strike at any time. Its impact will grow geometrically or be slashed to almost indistinguishable levels through the curse or benefit of technology.
Bill Bachenberg is the president and CEO of DBSi, a Bethlehem-based information technology hosting and disaster recovery service.
Originally appeared in The Morning Call, August 9, 2007
Copyright 2007 DBSi
Managed Hosting:
Outsourcing or
Rightsourcing?
Increasingly, the line between a business and its information technology (IT) is blurring. But even as IT has become increasingly important for most businesses, including hospitals, investment firms and manufacturers, the complexity of the technology makes it increasingly difficult and expensive for companies to manage it internally.
Companies all over the region now view DBSi as a breakthrough thought leader in managed hosting, providing cost-effective solutions with flexible contracts that improve overall competitiveness, reduce investment, allow for investment in other areas of their business and help meet corporate governance and regulatory requirements.