Can hard drives make people more reliable?

According to a study released by Fasthosts Internet Ltd (via Storage Newsletter)

37% (of respondents) have taken risks with work-related data or documents, such as using personal or home computers, or taking a slack approach to data security whilst outside of the office
25% of office workers take significant risks with their behaviour, such as losing a storage device or papers, or leaving laptops unsecured in public or in their cars.
25% of respondents keep work-related data from the past stored on their home computers.
20% of workers admit to frequently risking important documents by failing to make any back-up copy.

Yet, only 15% have knowledge that they have actually lost data as a result of such risky behavior versus only 10% know they have ” lost data recently as a result of a server or disk-drive failing“. Does this mean that hard drives are more reliable than people? Well, maybe, maybe not.

What’s more important is how can people minimize or eliminate data loss risk using hard drives and hard drive based solutions?

1. Install a Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) hard drive in your notebook (or purchase a notebook with SED technology).
2. Use external hard drives with encryption technology for when you have to backup your notebook, or need extra storage.
3. Use IT authorized cloud based storage for documents you need to access from multiple devices or from multiple locations.
4. Backup! Many organizations have backup procedures – use them. If you are a small business and don’t have procedures, establish some and make them mandatory.

It’s no doubt, telecommuting is increasing as we are becoming less and less tethered to our desks at the office, and need the flexibility to work from anywhere. According to Forrester Research via TJ Keitt at Forbes.com, “66% of the North American and European workforce work outside the office at some point during a month“. With that comes access to business data. People will undoubtedly take their own course of action to ensure they can do their jobs effectively from wherever they are. It is incumbent upon the organizations to embrace telecommuting. Eliminating it all together is something I just do see happening, and the only way to mitigate the risks 1/3 of us take is to adopt the technology that does just that.