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Data Dos & Don'ts: How to keep your info safe and sound

Scholastic Administrator – January 2006

Author: Lee Ann Murphy

Data Dos & Don’ts

Although the case of Hurricane Katrina is extreme, it proved the importance of backing up and storing data. “We saw massive damage to data servers,” says Tim Margeson, general manager at CBL Data Recovery Technologies, Inc. “So if a school had a data server on site, that data was wiped out.” Luckily, most schools in the area were storing data in a central location unaffected by the storm.

While it’s impossible to prevent all property and equipment damage in the event of a catastrophe, there’s little excuse for losing electronic data—ever. If you haven’t checked on your backup system recently, now is the time.

While most IT purchases at a district level will have a backup solution as part of the bargain, the onus is still on the user to ensure data are being backed up correctly, regularly, and without glitches. Testing the system on a regular basis is the only way to be sure this is so. Ben Castro of Maxtor Corporation suggests five basic rules to follow for backing up data whether you’re dealing with an entire district or individual teachers’ computers:

1. Develop a backup schedule. Back up your data daily, weekly, or even monthly. Just set a schedule and stick to it.
2. Back up everything. You never know.
3. Do it automatically. Use a solution that provides automatic backups.
4. Rotate backups. Give yourself added protection in case of an earthquake, fire, flood, or theft by making sure you have some kind of off-site backup, even if it isn’t updated as regularly as your on-site system.
5. Don’t procrastinate. Unfortunately, the need to back up data is often a lesson learned from bitter experience, but it doesn’t have to be.

Margeson also points out that natural disasters, although attention grabbing, are not the main causes of data loss. Ordinary mishaps are much more likely to cause problems, even major ones. That’s why it’s important for all schools, everywhere in the country, to regularly test backup systems. After all, once the data are gone, who will have to answer for that? You guessed it.