Data loss - Citizendia

In the field of information technology, data loss refers to the unforeseen loss of data or information. Information technology ( IT) as defined by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA is "the study design development implementation support An occurrence of data loss can be called a Data Loss Event and there are several possible root causes. Data loss must be distinguished from data unavailability, such as may arise from a network outage. Downtime or outage refers to a period of time or a percentage of a timespan that a System is unavailable or Offline. Although the two have substantially similar effects, data unavailability is temporary while data loss is permanent. Backup and recovery schemes are developed to restore lost data. In Information technology, backup refers to making copies of Data so that these additional copies may be used to restore the original after a Disaster recovery is the process policies and procedures of restoring operations critical to the resumption of business including regaining access to data (records hardware software

1 Types of Data Loss Events
2 Cost of data loss
3 Organizational Responsibility
4 Preventing data loss
5 Recovery from data loss
6 Data recovery
7 See also
8 References

Types of Data Loss Events

Intentional Action
- Intentional deletion of a file or program
Unintentional Action
- Accidental deletion of a file or program
- Misplacement of CDs or floppies
- Administration errors
- Inability to read unknown file format
Failure
- Power failure, resulting in data in volatile memory not being saved to permanent memory. A power outage (also known as power cut, power failure, power loss, or blackout) is the loss of the Electricity supply to an
- Hardware failure, such as a head crash in a hard disk. A head crash is a specific type of Hard disk failure, and occurs when the read-write head of a Hard disk drive touches its rotating platter
- A software crash or freeze, resulting in data not being saved. A crash in Computing is a condition where a program (either an application or part of the Operating system) stops performing its expected function and also
- Software bugs or poor usability, such as not confirming a file delete command.
- Data corruption, such as filesystem corruption or database corruption. Data corruption refers to errors in Computer Data that occur during transmission or retrieval introducing unintended changes to the original data
Disaster
- Natural disaster, earthquake, flood, tornado, etc. A natural disaster is the consequence of a Natural hazard (eg An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth 's crust that creates Seismic waves Earthquakes are recorded with a Seismometer A flood is an overflow of an expanse of water that submerges land a deluge A tornado is a violent rotating column of air which is in contact with both the surface of the earth and a Cumulonimbus cloud or in rare cases the base of a Cumulus
- Fire
Crime
- Theft, hacking, sabotage, etc. Fire is the heat and light energy released during a Chemical reaction, in particular a combustion reaction.
- A malicious act, such as a worm, virus, hacker or theft of physical media. A computer worm is a self-replicating Computer program. It uses a network to send copies of itself to other nodes (computer terminals on the network and it may do so without A computer virus is a Computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user

Studies have consistently shown hardware failure and human error to be two most common causes of data loss, accounting for roughly three quarters of all incidents. ^[1] A commonly overlooked cause is a natural disaster. Although the probability is small, the only way to recover from data loss due to a natural disaster is to store backup data in a physically separate location.

Cost of data loss

The cost of a Data Loss Event is directly related to the value of the data and the length of time that it is needed, but unavailable. Consider:

The cost of continuing without the data.
The cost of recreating the data.
The cost of notifying users in the event of a compromise

Organizational Responsibility

Recent statistics show the number of publicized data loss events involving sensitive data is on the rise^[2], in part due to recent legislation, including the landmark California SB 1386, requiring the notification of data loss. SB1386 amending civil codes 179829 179882 and 179884 is a California law regulating the privacy of personal information This and other legislation has forced organizations to notify victims that their identity has potentially been compromised.

Preventing data loss

There is no guaranteed way to prevent data loss. However, the frequency of data loss events and their impact can be greatly mitigated by taking proper precautions. The different types of data loss events demand different types of precautions. For example, multiple power circuits with battery backup and a generator will only protect against power failures. An uninterruptible power supply ( UPS) also known as a continuous power supply ( CPS) or a battery backup is a device which maintains a continuous Similarly, using a journaling filesystem and RAID storage will only protect against certain types of software and hardware failure. A journaling file system is a File system that logs changes to a journal (usually a circular log in a dedicated area before committing them to the main file RAID — which stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks,or alternatively Redundant Array of Independent Disks (a less specific name and thus now the Regular data backups are an important asset to have when trying to recover after a data loss event, but they don't do much to prevent user errors or system failures. In Information technology, backup refers to making copies of Data so that these additional copies may be used to restore the original after a

A well rounded approach to data protection has the best chance of avoiding data loss events. Such an approach will also include such mundane tasks as maintaining antivirus protection and network firewalls, as well as staying up to date with all published security fixes and system patches. A firewall is an integrated collection of security measures designed to prevent unauthorized electronic access to a networked computer system User education is probably the most important, and most difficult, aspect of preventing data loss. Nothing else will prevent users from making mistakes that jeopardize data security.

Also see: Data Loss Prevention

Recovery from data loss

Main article: Disaster recovery

Successful recovery from a Data Loss Event generally requires an effective backup strategy. Data Loss Prevention ( DLP) is a Computer security term referring to systems designed to detect and prevent the unauthorized transmission of information from the computer Disaster recovery is the process policies and procedures of restoring operations critical to the resumption of business including regaining access to data (records hardware software Without a backup strategy, recovery requires reinstallation of programs and regeneration of data. Even with an effective backup strategy, restoring a system to the precise state it was in prior to the Data Loss Event is extremely difficult. Some level of compromise between granularity of recoverability and cost is necessary. Furthermore, a Data Loss Event may not be immediately apparent. An effective backup strategy must also consider the cost of maintaining the ability to recover lost data for long periods of time.

The most convenient backup system would have duplicate copies of every file and program that were immediately accessible whenever a Data Loss Event was noticed. However, in most situations, there is an inverse correlation between the value of a unit of data and the length of time it takes to notice the loss of that data. Taking this into consideration, many backup strategies decrease the granularity of restorability as the time increases since the potential Data Loss Event. By this logic, recovery from recent Data Loss Events is easier and more complete than recovery from Data Loss Events that happened further in the past.

Recovery is also related to the type of Data Loss Event. Recovering a single lost file is going to be substantially different than recovering a whole system that was destroyed in a flood. An effective backup regimen will have some proportionality between the magnitude of Data Loss and the magnitude of effort required to recover. For example, it should be far easier to restore the single lost file than to recover the whole system destroyed in a flood.

Data recovery

Main article: Data recovery

There are commercial services that attempt to recover data from physically damaged media. Data recovery is the process of salvaging data from damaged failed corrupted or inaccessible secondary storage media when it cannot be accessed normally These services are typically very expensive.

Filesystem corruption can usually be repaired by the user or the system administrator with the right software tools. A deleted file is rarely overwritten on disk; it is more usual for the operating system to simply delete its entry in the filesystem index. This can be easily reversed.

References

^ The cost of lost data - Graziadio Business Report
^ Etiolated Statistics. SystemRescueCD is an Operating system which runs from a bootable CD-ROM disc (a Live CD) or a USB flash drive, useful for repairing Lossless data compression is a class of Data compression Algorithms that allows the exact original data to be reconstructed from the compressed data Etiolated Consumer\Citizen. Retrieved on 2007-06-05. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 70 - Titus and his Roman Legions breach the middle wall of Jerusalem in the Siege of Jerusalem

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