Survey Says: Storage Practices Don't Match Policies

March 30, 2009: A new online survey by Kroll Ontrack has revealed that data storage practices are not in line with data storage policies, with employees not necessarily complying with company guidelines and leaving organisations vulnerable to data loss.

The survey found that 40 percent of individuals stated that their company has a policy regarding where data should be stored. However, the survey results also revealed that 61 percent of respondents “usually” save to a local drive instead of a company network.

Kroll says that the risks associated with this practice could be minimised with an external backup drive or backup software, however, 44 percent of respondents said that their preferred storage location was not backed up.

“Saving to a local hard drive on a desktop or laptop more often than not contradicts data storage policies, which usually require employees to save to a network folder,” says Jeff Pederson, manager of operations for Ontrack Data Recovery, a business division of Kroll Ontrack. “Instating a guideline to save documents to a network better ensures the employee data is regularly backed up in accordance with company data retention procedures, reducing the chance of data loss.”

“With the majority of employees saving to unprotected, local drives, companies could be at risk for losing anything from project plans and spreadsheets to customer data and financial information,” says Pederson

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