Data Recovery Newsletters - May 2005

Data Security – It’s Not Just For Secret Agents Anymore

Data security has been a concern for businesses ever since the computer entered the mainstream corporate arena. While desktop and server computers sit behind layers of security, mobile/laptop users, small business users, and home users are vulnerable. Protecting company or personal information requires encrypting the data with a unique key that only the owner of that data has access to. But what happens when the data is being encrypted and the hard drive fails, or if the data becomes corrupted?

This month’s feature article will explore the topic of data encryption, explaining what encryption is, different methods for achieving it and how data loss figures into the picture. Click here to read the full article.

Reaction to Data Loss Survey Results

According to a recent global data loss research study that Ontrack performed, 75 percent of computer users’ immediate reaction to data loss is to try and recover the lost document themselves by using recovery software or either restarting or unplugging their computer. Unfortunately, since failed attempts can have detrimental and permanent effects, the victim’s first reaction is crucial to the outcome of recovery work and a user-attempted quick fix is the surest way to render your data permanently irretrievable. Click here to read about the survey results.

Ontrack® PowerControls™ 3.10 is here!

Ontrack® PowerControls™ 3.10 software, the newest version of its widely used mailbox recovery tool is now available. This upgraded version helps Microsoft Exchange administrators save time and deliver better recovery performance with enhanced searching capability and now includes expanded email system support for users of Hewlett-Packard’s Data Protector Backup Format.

"As email production continues to explode and new regulations call for more robust storage practices, storage administrators are looking for better solutions to help with the difficult task of managing huge volumes of email," said Jim Reinert, senior director of software and services for Ontrack Data Recovery. "New storage methods that classify data according to business value make it imperative that IT professionals have convenient methods for searching email
archives quickly. PowerControls 3.10 delivers these benefits by giving administrators the ability to quickly access Exchange Server backups on disk or tape, regardless of the current environment." Click here to learn more about the new features in PowerControls 3.10.

Efficient Email Archiving – Learning to Deal with Backups and Legacy Mail!

With strict email retention regulations becoming more prevalent, many businesses are implementing sophisticated archiving systems to help manage the large volumes of email produced on a daily basis. While there are many excellent archiving solutions that can provide great results for newly created mail, a significant drawback with many archiving systems is their inability to automatically make old mail part of the new system.

As mentioned above, new archiving systems are great for any mail created after they are installed, but old mail remains a challenge. Access to legacy mail is extremely important as restore requests due to regulatory or legal requirements could apply to mail that is several years old. If restorations are done with old backup tapes, the process can take a significant amount of time and use valuable IT resources. As painful as the process may be, old messages will often have
to be recovered. For those not able to produce old emails, the consequences have been severe, including massive fines costing millions of dollars.

Thankfully, PowerControls can help solve the legacy mail problem by allowing email administrators a simple way to access old mail. Click here to find out more

Don’t Open the Drive!

When hard drive problems occur, many people are tempted to open the drive themselves and attempt repairs. This is always a bad idea since warranties are immediately voided when the drive is opened by the user. That is not the case for Ontrack as our engineers are authorized by major hard drive manufacturers including Fujitsu, IBM, Maxtor, Quantum, Samsung, Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital to unseal any of their hard drives for data recovery without voiding the manufacturer’s warranty. Any time there is a mechanical failure, the technical work is best left to Ontrack’s experienced engineers and state-of-the-art tools that ensure complete protection for your customers’ data and equipment.