Lesson to be learnt from 11 Sept disaster

Johannesburg, 11 Sept 2002

While the cost in human lives in last year`s attacks on the World Trade Centre was appalling, this was not the only cost to be incurred. Many companies were brought to their knees by the fact that so much data was lost that they could no longer function as a business.

"The 11 September tragedy brought home the need for secure remote backup of data more effectively than anything else, as so many organisations foundered due to the fact that the data they lost in the attacks was irrecoverable," says Attix5 CEO, Roelou Barry.

"Up to 60% of corporate data resides unprotected outside the corporate environment, and this data, which sits on staff laptops, home PCs, PDAs and mobile phones, is not backed up in any way."

Barry says it is critical for organisations to ensure the security and protection of company data through automated, remote file storage, as the present tape-based storage solutions have proven to be unreliable.

Ernst & Young`s 2002 Global Information Security Survey confirms this, with figures that show only 40% of businesses are confident they would detect a systems attack. The survey found that only 53% of organisations have business continuity plans and less than 50% have information security training and awareness programmes.

Attix5 believes the remote backup and retrieval of information is set to become one of the largest markets in the industry, especially as the market is expected to grow from about $70 million in 1999 to $2.7 billion by 2005.

"Some organisations could be judged irresponsible in their approach to information security, particularly as the management of such data is critical to both business survival and competitive advantage," says Barry.

"It is also the board`s duty to ensure that backup systems are in place, not the IT department. It is a board-level decision, and that is where the buck stops."