Here's a "duh" statement if ever there was one - "Digital information is at risk of being lost." That from the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). SNIA released the results of its 100 Year Archive Requirements Survey Report this past Monday. Some of the key findings:

- Long-term digital information retention needs are real: 80 percent of respondents have information they must keep over 50 years, and 68 percent of respondents said they must keep this data more than 100 years.

- Long-term generally means greater than 10 to 15 years a period beyond which multiple physical media and logical format migrations must take place. Only 30 percent declared they were migrating information at regular intervals.

- Database information was considered to be most at risk of loss.

- Over 40 percent of respondents are keeping e-mail records over 10 years.

- 70 percent of respondents say they are 'highly dissatisfied' with their ability to read their retained information in 50 years.

None of this is surprising. Nor is the news that most of those surveyed feel current data storage practices are too manual, too prone to error, too costly, etc.

The entire report can be found at the SNIA web site. You can go to the SNIA main site to view a press-release summary of the results.