Onyx pursues business continuity acquisitions

Onyx Group is targeting more buy-outs in the business continuity arena after rolling out its SME-focused disaster recovery offering, states Computing.co.uk.

In October, Onyx bought London-based Disaster Recovery Solutions in a deal which gave it 80 workplace recovery sites across the UK - 40 of those in the capital. It now has more than 100 in total, each catering for up to 25 employees.

OnyxRecover, unveiled last month, offers business continuity packages starting from £16 (R176) per user per month. Onyx chief executive Neil Stephenson claims many disaster recovery packages do not cater effectively for smaller firms, particularly in London.

Managed data backup firm LiveBackup has unveiled an automated, online data backup service for Australian businesses, reports Computerworld.

Tape has maintained its position at the head of most organisational backup strategies for the past 20 years, but LiveBackup MD, Peter Thompson, says the new service is a sign that the end for tape drives is nigh.

“Tape drives are notoriously unreliable, the manual backup process is open to human error and the restoration process is slow, stressful and far from fail-proof,” he adds.

Xhead = UK fines £500k for data loss

UK businesses can now be fined up to £500 000 (R5.5 million) for breaches of the Data Protection Act 1998 as an amendment to the law came into force recently, says ChannelWeb.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), which will hand out the penalties, says in its online guide there are eight basic principles which anyone processing personal data can follow to stay on the right side of the law.

“The scope of the Data Protection Act is very wide, as it applies to just about everything you might do with individuals' personal details,” says the ICO. “It does require you to have appropriate security measures in place to guard against unauthorised use or disclosure of the personal data you hold, or its accidental loss or destruction.”