Just because your company houses data does not mean it's being protected. And folks are noticing - a recent study by OpenSky Research found that only 12 percent of those asked believed with 100-percent certainty that their companies were doing all they could to protect their IT systems. Since 45 percent of businesses experienced IT failure in 2005, that's a scary thought.

So how do you get back up and running after an outage or a disaster-related event? That's the topic discussed in an article published by Data Storage Today. While the article addresses mostly the urgency of the situation, it touches on one of the most important aspects of securing data - offsite storage. I've long been an advocate of offsite storage procedures, but have often wondered just how well these procedures are thought out. For instance, if you're in the path of a hurricane, and you've chosen to house your data at an offsite facility three miles away, chances are you haven't planned well enough.

Common sense should rule. Offsite, in most cases, should be far enough away that the same natural event will not take out your data, as well.

(See me on Technorati)