WatchGuard Wire
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One mistaken key press cost $220,700
If you've used a computer for long, you've experienced the chilling moment
when you realize you've mistakenly deleted something important. So
I can't stop wincing in sympathy as I read about a clerk in Alaska who deleted
the records of an account worth $38 billion.
During routine maintenance, the technician accidentally wiped out nine months'
worth of information documenting which individuals in Alaska qualified for
government payouts related to oil. In the process of trying to restore the
deleted information, workers discovered that their backup wasn't viable (the
hard drive had been reformatted), and the backup to the backup didn't work
(unreadable tape drives). Eventually most of the data was recovered, but only
after overtime, temp workers, and expert consulting racked up more than $220,000
in expenses.
The moral
of the story: you might have a Business Continuity Plan and a Disaster Recovery
Plan on paper, but you don't know your backups work unless
you've restored from them. If your policy does not currently require periodic
test restoration of backup data, take a lesson from the poor shmuck in Alaska.
Reality trumps policy any day, so make sure you can restore -- really. -- D.
Scott Pinzon, CISSP
Copyright© 2010 WatchGuard® Technologies, Inc. You may copy and distribute this article freely in any medium as long as you copy and distribute the entire article without change and preserve this copyright statement and notice.
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