My work laptop is configured with redirected folders and offline files so all my data primarily resides on our office server and is centrally backed up using the company’s Iron Mountain LiveVault account (which we host as a reseller in our data centre).
I work from home most of the time thanks to modern technology, e.g. VPN to the office, Remote Assistance, VPN to the data centre, HP ILO and Windows Remote Desktop. I’m only in the office once a week or maybe even once every two weeks. This means that business critical data that I’m generating resides on my laptop for possibly two weeks at a time without being backed up. That’s not good. I should really "do as I say" and resolve that issue.
I’ve installed an Iron Mountain Connected agent on my laptop. It couldn’t have been easier; register the account, download the client, click-click-click installation and then select the files I want to back up. The latter is usually easy, e.g. Desktop, Favourites, My Documents (if not redirected) and the Outlook PST file (which I’m not too worried about because we use a SaaS provider with a central mailbox for that). Then I let it run and I know my data is backed up … and secure thanks to AES encryption which starts and ends on my agent, i.e. the data remains encrypted and the data centre cannot even read it. Connected can access open files thanks to the Volume Shadow Copy service (VSS) so files I’m working on can be backed up. The solution requires an initial synchronisation to get the data into the vaults but only does block level (only what changes within a file) from then thus minimising Internet bandwidth usage. We also keep Connected data on two independent but replicated stores. So if one server dies my data is still safe.
And after that first backup I got nice news. 90+MB of data was backed up. This was optimised to around 30MB, thus saving Internet bandwidth.
I then logged onto the central web console to view my account. I get a summary of historical operations and my account’s storage allocation usage. I can recover data via the console (handy if my laptop isn’t available but I need access to data). I also have the option of ordering a CD or DVD with my data on it (still in it’s encrypted state for secure travel) in case my laptop was lost or destroyed.
The whole experience is as simple as can be. I’m running Vista SP1 and Office 2007 which is a good test for the product. It’s a whole lot easier and more resilient than using DVD-RW or external hard disks. The company is also safer in knowing that business files I’m generating get backed up before I can replicate to the office server or upload them onto SharePoint.
Disk encryption is done using Iron Mountain DataDefence. I don’t have much on my laptop but I still want to be sure that the data is secure against accidental loss or theft, thus protecting our business and our clients confidentiality.