A Trial By Fire

eWeek, September 9, 2002, Page 37
Reported by Cameron Sturdevant, cameron_sturdevant@ziffdavis.com
  "...In the wee hours of July 15, a fire started on a deck of the two-story wood frame building in Walnut Creek, Calif., that had been home to WildPackets, Inc for the past 12 years.

"...However, aside from two hard drives--one from a Macintosh and one from a PC--nothing of value was recovered from the former home of this 60-plus employee network traffic monitoring company. The losses included the most recent 70-tape backup library of the company's intellectual property, customer records and financial reports.

"...Before passing by the rest of this story, make sure you can answer these simple questions:
  • Where are the passwords for your company's encrypted tape backups?
  • When was the last backup taken off-site?
  • How long would it take to restore data if the source equipment was gone?
  • Has anyone in the organization even practiced a restore from tape?
  • Is the loss plan based on single machines or on whole departments?
  • For that matter, when was the last time a fire drill was conducted at the organization?
"...Consider this: It took Wild-Packets nearly two weeks to recover the data from a month-old tape backup that was stored off-site."

"...WildPackets' hopes of a speedy restore were dashed when it discovered that an archived AIT-3 tape in the company's on-site fireproof box looked OK, but the intense heat made the tape so brittle that it crumbled when salvage experts at Computer Conversions Inc. tried to load it.

"...It was a pure stroke of luck that the disk contained WildPackets' Intuit Inc. QuickBooks Accounting package. Wild Packets was able to restore its accounts receivable, invoices and many customer records from this system.

"...To file insurance claims properly and promptly, WildPackets needed detailed records of the equipment it lost in the fire, including information such as the purchase price, date of purchase and replacement value.

WildPackets reconstructed most of this information from state tax records (a good incentive to accurately list all business assets) and from receipts stored at the tax preparer's office.
 
Selected Phrases For Discussion:
 
  • Where are the passwords?
  • practiced a restore
  • nothing of value was recovered
  • the most recent 70-tape backup library
  • recover the data from a month-old tape backup
  • hopes of a speedy restore were dashed
  • < START IRONY >Fireproof Box< END IRONY >
  • so brittle that it crumbled
  • detailed records of the equipment it lost
  • pure stroke of luck