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Date Added.: Feb 9, 2010;
Category: Data loss may come about as a consequence of the following occurrences:
1. Human being errors these include:
- Inadvertent reformatting of the hard disk
- Intentional removal of vital information
- Unintentional removal of vital data.
2. Hard drive and storage drive failures including:
- RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) failure
- Crash- computer server crash
- Natural disasters and physical damages
- NAS (Network-attached storage)
3. Application software failure and Filesystem corruption
4. Virus and Malicious attacks
The undeniable truth is that current Information technology can utilise advanced data recovery applications at all levels. It doesn't matter the type of media concerned, the brand of PC system, the operating system platform or the capacity of your PC server, most of the time, information can be recovered.
Nonetheless, the cost of data loss can occasionally be inestimable, if you take into account the cost of not having the data any longer, the time you need to recreate or retrieve the information and the damaging impression it will have on relatives, colleagues, a whole management information system (MIS), establishment or external concerns who have a claim in the lost data.
For example, in the corporate environment, the cost of data loss may run into millions of pounds per hour. Data recovery time may depend on the capacity of the hardware and it may perhaps take days to retrieve lost information.
In addition, data recovery can be very costly, this depends on the level of damage done to the hard disk or hard drive in question.
It is important to stress that the highest source of data loss can be attributed to human error, as a result the responsibility is on us to prevent the loss of our valuable data as much as possible.
The following simple but fundamental steps ought to be taken to avoid loss of information:
- Frequent backup of data (both internal and external).
- Setting up and constant update of antivirus protection.
- Uninterrupted update of computer systems and servers to harness newest security fixes.
- Setting up and efficient upgrade of firewalls to stop invasion and malicious attacks.
- Setting up of DLP (Data Loss Prevention) systems to scrutinize and protect data usage by organizations.
- Installation of proper mechanisms to guard against power failure and power surge.
It is impractical to wholly avoid the loss of data. However, in as much as everybody or entity using a machine to process and store very important information is run the risk of losing it, taking ample precautions to reduce the risk is all the time a wise decision.
See also:
Stages of Data Processing Cycle
Sending a Large Amount of Data over a Network – Routing, Compression and Flow Control
