Learn from New Orleans - the value of a good backup plan

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Learning from New Orleans – The Value of a Good Data Backup Plan | Main Street Financing Challengesfunction HideSponsor(){document.getElementById('Search_InputBox_Sponsor').style.display = 'none';document.getElementById('Search_InputBox_Sponsor').disabled = true;document.getElementById('Search_InputBox').style.display = 'inline';clearSearchBox('searchinput_id');}function clearSearchBox(data){thisdata = document.getElementById(data);thisdata.value = '';thisdata.focus();}Sign In | Join |  | About Home   Finance Resource Center   2011 AllBusiness AllStar Franchises   Franchises for Sale  Shop Legal Forms  Small Business Blog  Download Center  Business Resource Center   Starting a Business Planning for Success Buying a Business Structuring Your Company Funding Your Startup Protecting Your Startup Franchises Operating Your Business Green Business Business Travel Insurance Office Management Legal Exiting Your Business Sales & Marketing Marketing & Advertising Public Relations Customer Service Sales Finance Accounting Budgeting Business Credit Personal Finance Pricing Taxes Human Resources Career Advice Management & Leadership Workers’ Compensation Workplace Health & Safety Technology Business Software Internet & Online Business Hardware Security Mobile Business Library AllBusiness Blogs Professional Journals Videos Podcasts Glossary Legal Forms Company Profiles Resources Business Directory Franchise Directory Quote Center Trade Magazines Industries Related Topics:New Orleans, LA, USA | Hurricane Katrina | Meteorology | Title Abstract & Settlement Services | Natural Disasters | Small Business Lending | Banking & Finance | Accounting Professionals CenterMain Street Financing Challenges  Learning from New Orleans – The Value of a Good Data Backup PlanWednesday, March 30 2011
Share:Print  ArchivesMore.at300bs{float: left; margin-right: 1px;}Sam Thacker
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In New Orleans, Louisiana (Orleans Parish) they lost all their electronic real estate records in October 2010, costing home sellers and buyers millions of dollars. Having a good data back up plan that works is essential.

Who would have known that there was a basement in the parish courthouse in New Orleans? Prior to Hurricane Katrina very old and valuable real estate dead records were stored in the basement.

Title companies use these records to research ownership of a piece of real estate back to the beginning of records. Title companies can’t issue a title insurance policy unless they can be convinced that the property ownership trail is free of disputes, encumbrances, or ownership issues. Before computerization, when a property changed hands, entries were made in a huge ledger book. Before Hurricane Katrina the paper records were the only records of real estate transactions that go back hundreds of years. The records were damaged during the hurricane, and the parish hired a service to restore the water-damaged records and archive them digitally.

Once all the damaged records were restored in an optical image format, they were stored on a server in the parish clerk’s office. The parish clerk hired a service to handle backing up the records on a daily basis and keeping a set of mirrored records off-site in a safe location.

On October 25, 2010 the courthouse records server crashed, destroying the hard drives and all the records maintained on them. Within a day it became clear that the company hired to handle the off-site backup had not done an offsite backup since July, 2010. Apparently a software update glitch in July shut down the back-up system process.

To make matters worse, off-site backups were not being kept very long. Backups were being purged every month.

For buyers and sellers of property and the real estate service community, this has been a serious problem because people have not been able to buy or sell property without title insurance.

Business owners should learn a few serious lessons from the New Orleans experience.

1. There must be an electronic back-up process in place.

2. It doesn’t hurt for there to be two backup systems in place. One might be to transfer one server’s records to a second server in your business on a daily basis at the same time either uploading your backup to an off-site electronic storage facility during business off hours.

3. Whether your company backs up to a site on the Internet or to a tape drive, a certain portion of physical back-ups should be kept off site.

4. The backup and restore process should be tested at least once a month to ensure that it properly works.

5. If updates are made to the process or software that handles the backup process, the restore functionality should be retested, several times.

6. When you pick a third -arty company to assist you with back up tasks, make sure you and they have a clear understanding of the process and what each of your roles is going to be in the relationship.

7. Have a written disaster recovery plan in place that covers as many contingencies as you can imagine.

Today, five months after the Orleans Parish data disaster, nearly 120,000 records remain lost. They are slowly being rebuilt using a variety of methods. Buying, selling, and providing title insurance for homes in the parish is still a big problem.

Hopefully Orleans Parish has learned some hard lessons, but you don’t have to if you simply follow the seven tips I provide above. Even the smallest company has critical data that needs to be backed up and stored off-site, and as they say in the IT world, it isn’t a matter of “if” you have a critical failure of technology; it is a matter of “when” that failure occurs.

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...By: dfgadfhb dfhbdfhbon3/31/11 at 7:46 PMLearning from New Orleans – The Value of a Good Data Backup PlanPar for the course...Sam, I'm a New Orleans native -- my family there goes back many generations. And I can tel you one thing for sure: They haven't learned a thing from this.

Other folks can look at this disaster and draw the appropriate lessons. But anyone who knows how the government operates down there, this is neither surprising nor shocking. In fact, I'm amazed they bothered TRYING to digitize those records.

Also, call me a cynic, but I guarantee you the company hired to handle those backups wasn't hired because it could do the best job. More likely that somebody's brother-in-law knew somebody who contributed to somebody's election campaign. 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