ICO serves first fines for data losses

Today, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) have fined 2 organisations a combined total of £160,000 for serious breaches of the Data Protection Act. Full press release here.

One of these is an employment services company who had issued an employee with an unencrypted laptop so that they could work from home - a very familiar story for organisations across the country. However, this is where the story takes a turn for the bad, with the laptop stolen meaning that personal information relating to over 20,000 people had fallen into rogue hands.

2 of Redstor's leading cloud services include full end to end encryption. Redstor Protector combines laptop encryption, device trace, remote data deletion, automatic backup and port access control. This enables organisations to fully manage their risks in the event of having laptops stolen. You can find out more about how Redstor Protector can help you protect your data by downloading our whitepaper here.

Redstor Online Backup is an automated backup service, your data is sent over your existing internet connection to one of our secure Data Centres before mirroring to our secondary Data Centre for Disaster Recovery purposes. From the moment the data leaves your site, whilst in transit and right the way through until it resides in our Data Centres; it's fully encrypted to give you that peace of mind you've got off-site data protection.

Backup millions of files - IP Backup

At Redstor we found a fantastic software and have been using it in house for sometime now to protect our own data. The backup software solution worked so well we decided to bring it to market and it now powers our Redstor Online Backup Plus Service.

The software is extremely suitable to large data sets, large files and data sets with millions of directories and files. Redstor Online Backup Plus uses a delta block technology and this approach is fundamentally different to the way in which other backup applications, (file or block level) operate. There are further key differentiators that give huge advantages when backing up millions of files and large data volumes. This method of backing up and recovering large data volumes within small periods of time is commonly referred to as IP Backup.

If you have these challenges or want to know more, click here to read about the service and download the datasheet or feel free to contact Redstor and we can provide you with further technical details and assist you in any implementation.

This is your backup window of opportunity to change the way you backup forever!

Is Co-operation the way forward for Local Authorities?

One of the cornerstones of the Coalition Government being formed earlier this year was their promise to streamline public services in order to deliver cost savings on the nation's route out of the recession.

Part of this may come in the form of Local Authorities being given the incentive to deliver services to other areas outside of their Geographical remit - you can read more here. This would see Local Authorities recognised more as Commercial organisations and given the ability to act as such. Local Authorities would be able to cut costs by launching shared services - this would in turn enable them to hit their targets for the Carbon Reduction Scheme by sharing Data Centres instead of running and maintaining separate Data Centres.

Redstor have been working with our Local Authority partners to provide services that make their lives and jobs easier by helping them deliver shared services. Instead of each individual Local Authority investing in their own new Data Centres to power backup solutions; 85 of them now backup their data to our Data Centres through RBUSS which allows us all to save energy and have a greener approach to ICT.

Through our Remote Management & Monitoring tool CentraStage, Local Authorities can automate repetitive tasks and share knowledge pools of which tasks to automate in order to free up resources. Dozens of Local Authorities are already working in this manner to co-operate and help each other do more with less.

Cloud Storage from Redstor - the countdown is on...

With just 52 days left until the launch of Cloud Storage from Redstor in conjunction with EMC, the industry as a whole are looking at ways to "cloudify" their solutions to integrate with ATMOS.

The latest of these is Riverbed with the launch of Riverbed Whitewater which is a cloud storage accelerator that works with existing backup software to securely accelerate and de-duplicate data to the public cloud, and enable fast restore at any time.

You can read more about Riverbed's journey to the cloud here.

In January 2011, Redstor will be one of the first UK companies to offer cloud storage services powered by the EMC Atmos platform. It will offer its customers the opportunity to reduce costs, mitigate risks and migrate to a virtual data centre with confidence and ease whilst minimalising the up front capital expenditures previously associated. The partnership is part of Redstor’s growth plans to increase its cloud service portfolio and compliments existing services Online Backup and Protector.

ICO takes action against Google

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) have written to the world's leading search engine Google to advise them their recent Google Street View project significantly breached the Data Protection Act.

Since April 2010, The ICO have had the power to impose fines of up to £500,000 on organisations who breach the Data Protection Act. Within this legislation includes specific reference to the encryption of data.

"Organisations can minimise the risks of security breaches involving personal information by ensuring that all portable media devices containing personal information are encrypted. Staff must be adequately trained and organisations should give proper consideration to restricting staff from downloading large volumes of data onto memory sticks and other portable devices. All personal information held within buildings and offices should be protected by adequate security arrangements to prevent theft or the loss of the data."

The full legislation is available on the ICO website.

Google's breach is so far the highest profile case and has resulted in Christopher Graham, who is appointed as Information Commissioner by HM The Queen writing directly to Google, who will now have to sign an indemnity to appear on the ICO's website as well as be subject to a full ICO audit. Christopher Graham said, "It is my view that the collection of this information was not fair or lawful and constitutes a significant breach of the first principle of the Data Protection Act."

"The most appropriate and proportionate regulatory action in these circumstances is to get written legal assurance from Google that this will not happen again - and to follow this up with an ICO audit."

2 of Redstor's leading cloud services include full end to end encryption. Redstor Protector combines laptop encryption, device trace, remote data deletion, automatic backup and port access control. This enables organisations to fully lockdown their laptops in the event of them being lost or stolen. You can find out more about how Redstor Protector can help you protect your data by downloading our whitepaper here.

Redstor Online Backup is an automated backup service, your data is sent over your existing internet connection to one of our secure Data Centres before mirroring to our secondary Data Centre for Disaster Recovery purposes. From the moment the data leaves your site, whilst in transit and right the way through until it resides in our Data Centres; it's fully encrypted to give you that peace of mind your data is secure and protected off-site.

If you're unsure of the current level of protection for your data then you should call the Data Protection specialists Redstor on 0118 9515 200.

Education Investor Awards 2010 - 1 week to go

This time next week a number of the Redstor team will be donning their gladrags for the 2010 Education Investor Awards at The Grosvenor House Hotel on London's Park Lane.

The Education Investor Awards celebrate innovation and excellence in the UK's education industry and Redstor have been nominated in the category of "Best Supplier to the Education sector".

Redstor's Managing Director, Paul Evans said "We are very proud to have been nominated for this award following our continued hard work in the Education sector over the past 5 years. We are now working with over 85 Local Authority partners who address 14,000 schools to deliver relevant services that simplify their lives and enable them to focus on high value tasks and efforts. As part of our work with those partners we have introduced new services such as CentraStage, our device management tool and RBUSS Mobile which is our laptop encryption and backup service. We are also looking at other new technologies to launch in the new year to address the challenges of 21st century ICT service delivery. Now, we are all looking forward to enjoying the awards!"

Are you struggling to protect your data?

Redstor have today made available a best practice guide for organisations to download simply by clicking here.

The guide gives useful tips and advice on data protection and device management within the modern Digital age, with the rise of mobile devices in the corporate space seemingly endless.

One of our cloud services which does enable organisations to further protect data is Redstor Protector which is policy driven and combines Backup, Data Deletion, Device Trace, Port Access Control and Encryption.

For further information, please call our Reading office on 0118 9515 200.

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