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Legalities of data storage

22nd October 2012 Print

Electronic data laws provide companies with every increasing data storage issues, as they have to ensure that they comply with the various different legal requirements.

It’s important that a company determines which regulations it is affected by and which ones it needs to comply with. Each organisation should have a data security strategy in place and the roles and responsibilities of different employees for executing this strategy should be clearly defined.

Data retention is a key part of data security, and the data that a company needs to store should be easily accessible. Periodic testing should be carried out to make sure that data is secure and can be found easily when needed.

As new data management requirements develop, it is vital that employees are made aware of any changes and trained correctly.

Technology

There are generally two types of data that organisations have to manage – unalterable data and that which is removable or can be altered.

Any data which is unalterable is usually kept on site and requires permanent storage. Data that can be changed or removed can be stored off-site and only need be stored for a set period.

To provide the possibility of recovering lost data, data backups are essential, and here is where NAS storage online can be really invaluable. An NAS (network attached storage) device allows multiple users at multiple computers on a network to use the same device for storage. This means there is no need to plug in to each workstation – the NAS device is connected to the network via the wireless router. For most businesses, a combination of online and offline storage solutions is usually the best course of action.

Most companies will have the IT infrastructure in place to ensure automatic data backup and recovery processes, which allows for storage of information that needs to be retained for long periods. And if you don’t know whether your business has adequate data storage in place, it is worth consulting an expert consultant to make sure you are doing things right.