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- NEW YORK -
Accidental deletions
are an epidemic source of corporate data loss,
causing 30 times more destruction
of important information than viruses
and costing over $15 billion each
year, according to a recent poll of
NT system managers.
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- Eighty-eight percent of those surveyed believe
inadvertent
deletions are the leading source of corporate data loss,
while viruses
account for only 3 percent of information
destruction.
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- The poll targeted 300 randomly selected Windows NT system
managers from various corporate and government sites spanning a range of
networks from small to large, and was conducted by American Business
Research
Corporation (ABRC) a market research company based in Irvine,
California.
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- The dollar amount resulting from accidental data loss
rises
significantly each time a study is done. Two years ago, for instance,
Ontrack Data International found that human error, including accidental
deletions, was responsible for 32 percent of data loss. Only one year ago,
a study by Tandberg Data found that data loss due to human error had risen
to 67 percent.
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- Accidental deletions may cost companies billions, but
they keep
data recovery vendors in the black.
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- "We get dozens of calls
each day to restore a file
due to user deletions," says Gary
Sutton, CEO of online backup service
@Backup.
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- According to the poll, an
overwhelming majority of system
managers feel that protecting company
data is one of the most important
aspects of their job, although nearly
50 percent lack confidence in backup
systems.
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- "Almost any system manager
will tell you that the
time backups fail is when there is something you
really need to find and
recover," says Jack Renfro, a
DaimlerChrysler Corporation network
administrator.
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- "Just as nearly every
computer now has anti-virus
software, so must we equip workstations and
servers with adequate means
of recovering accidentally deleted
files," says Renfro.
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- Nearly all the NT managers surveyed had experienced
backup
failures, citing such factors as critical data being lost
between backups
(54 percent), media failure or human error leading to
backup unreliability
(26 percent), and individual workstations often
being omitted from the
backup schedule (14 percent).
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