6 Top Data Recovery Conversations in 2015 – Kroll Ontrack

A spike in adoption of complex, high-end software-defined storage (SDS) systems was the top trend impacting the data recovery industry in 2015, resulting in demand for more enhanced recovery technologies for businesses, according to Kroll Ontrack LLC.

Other trends on the rise include the need for better data privacy and security as well as enhanced legacy data management technologies.

Software-Defined Storage:
Expectation for recovery technologies to meet system demands
Recovery from software-defined storage systems is not only possible, it’s now expected. Developed to be infallible, growing industry adoption of software defined storage is now reflected in the increasing demand for recovery solutions from these systems when they prove fallible. With vendors establishing their own proprietary methods of storing data within their system, Kroll Ontrack has found that most enterprise failures resulting in data loss require a custom recovery solution.

“Whether organizations are leveraging EMC Isilon, Infortrend EonStor, HP StorageWorks systems or other enterprise systems, we’re finding that the complexity of recovery is staggering, but absolutely possible,” says Jeff Pederson, senior manager, data recovery operations, Kroll Ontrack. “We’ve seen a two-fold increase in the number of high-end system failures resulting in data loss in 2015 and have found that recovery success with software-defined storage rests on accurately pinpointing the failure, analyzing and deciphering proprietary storage designs, rebuilding file systems and developing solutions to restore critical data.”

Hyper-converged Storage:
Uniting compute, storage and virtualization into turnkey storage solution
At the leading edge of storage innovation lies hyper-convergence, an approach to IT architecture that consolidates and manages computing, networking, and storage resources via software to run on any manufacturer’s hardware. Hyper-converged storage empowers simplicity in ease of use, rapid implementation, space savings and quick redundancy which make it very easy to expand and protect data while realizing cost savings.

Launching in the mainstream market in late 2014 and gaining adoption in 2015, there is anticipation that the need for data recovery from hyper-converged systems will rise in 2016. Recovery is challenging, in part, because data is fully integrated into the unit making it difficult to gain sector level access to the disks. Further, system pre-configuration, especially with HDD, SSD and flash cache, or lack of information about system configuration, could pose recovery challenges, as well. Kroll Ontrack R&D engineering teams are analyzing this emerging storage trend and are developing strategies to overcome data loss when it arises.

Onsite and Remote Data Recovery:
Protecting data privacy in sensitive or regulated environments
Like many industries, the data recovery industry is not immune to the impact of global data privacy and security laws. In fact, the evolving data privacy landscape and the impetus by highly regulated organizations to keep sensitive data on premise have resulted in a growing need for onsite or remote data recovery solutions. In addition to addressing data privacy concerns, onsite technical expertise is increasingly required when complex data configurations or the massive size of systems make it difficult for organizations to hone in on the target data for recovery.

“Highly complex systems and the obligation to protect data privacy are driving more onsite requests than ever before,” said Todd Johnson, VP of data and storage Technologies, Kroll Ontrack. “While some organizations are able to leverage remote technologies like Ontrack Remote Data Recovery (RDR) to perform data recovery without a HDD or other storage device leaving an enterprise’s data center, we’re seeing that some highly regulated industries, such as healthcare and financial services, can disallow even connecting remotely to their network for privacy reasons. As a result, we’re seeing a growing trend for onsite technical support and recovery.“

Legacy Data Management:
Garnering insight and value from legacy data
As organizations grapple with their legal obligation to keep and maintain access to regulated data, maintaining legacy data management systems can be costly and tedious, leaving some organizations at risk if they neglect to comply. A 2015 global Kroll Ontrack survey of over 700 IT administrators found that nearly one-third of organizations do not have clear insight into the information within their tape archives, and more than one-third store more than 100 tapes in their archive. Tape management best practices rest on identifying the quality status of the tape archive and having knowledge of the data stored within the archive. Not surprisingly, Kroll Ontrack is seeing a demand for technologies that not only catalog the information/location of data to meet legal demands, but also consolidate catalogs from various systems into a single, searchable, inventory to eliminate costs associated with maintaining legacy systems.

Secure Data Deletion and Validation:
Focusing on data security to combat inadvertent exposure
2015 has once again proven that data privacy and security are paramount to any organization handling digital data. Certainly nefarious cybercrime and data breach continue to plague the news prompting organizations to beef up data security practices. However, IT administrators and even drive manufacturers themselves are combatting a slightly different data security challenge, namely ensuring that built-in data wiping tools are securely and completely sanitizing drives prior to re-use or disposal.

“We’ve seen an uptick in requests from IT departments and drive manufacturers for third-party validation that a system’s sanitization function is 100% effective in securely deleting data,” said Pederson. “As a result, Kroll Ontrack has witnessed an exponential increase in demand for our Erasure Verification Services, where our engineers perform detailed analysis of sanitized drives and provide reporting on results to validate whether deletion methods are secure. It’s another layer of protection organizations have at their disposal.”