U.S. Small Business Administration

Online Backup and Data Recovery: Keeping it Simple for Small Business*

Since 1953, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has assisted nearly 20 million U.S. businesses. The agency's many programs include providing management assistance, specialized outreach to women, minorities and armed forces veterans, and federal contract procurement assistance. With a portfolio of approximately 219,000 loans worth more than $45 billion, the SBA is also the largest single financial backer of U.S. businesses in the nation.

The SBA understands firsthand that disaster can strike at any moment—a significant portion of its loan portfolio consists of low interest disaster relief loans. In order to protect its assets and the assets of its customers, the SBA has implemented a comprehensive disaster recovery plan at its headquarters in Washington, D.C., and nationwide across all 90 of its regional and branch offices.

Online backup and data recovery had long been the most challenging component of the SBA's disaster recovery plan, requiring daily attention and coordination across each of its locations. The agency had been relying on tape-based data backup systems. However, it was virtually impossible for the SBA's IT department to ensure that every location was consistently backing up its data properly and vaulting it off site on a regular basis. As a result, there was significant risk of operational disruption due to the possibility of an office losing critical data due to a human error, system failure, server crash or broader disaster. The SBA recently eliminated this vulnerability in its disaster recovery plan by adopting Electronic Vaulting, powered by LiveVault® to automate backup and data recovery across multiple locations.

Off-Site + On-Time = Peace of Mind
When studying options for revitalizing its data backup and disaster recovery operations, the SBA quickly determined that it needed the help of an outside vendor. "We realized that we didn't have the adequate in-house resources to protect our data. We had dual requirements: backing up our data in a reliable fashion, and storing it offsite," said Kevin Adcock, computing specialist for the SBA. "We needed a bullet-proof solution that would take all the guesswork out of our backup and data recovery operations."

To find a solution to its backup and recovery needs, the SBA turned to Iron Mountain, and its electronic backup and data recovery service, Electronic Vaulting, powered by LiveVault. Electronic Vaulting eliminates the challenges associated with backing up servers in multiple locations without adequate in-house resources. The service automatically backs up server data over the Internet and stores it offsite in a secure Iron Mountain vault. Critical data is always backed up and can be immediately restored, if necessary, through a simple web-based user interface. The element of human error is removed from backup and disaster recovery operations.

"Our backup and data recovery operations are now much more
efficient. We know that all of our critical backup data is now available
for restore anytime we need it."

Since Electronic Vaulting is web-based, the SBA has been able to replace its more than 90 separate backup and data recovery operations with a single, automated online backup and recovery solution that spans all locations. SBA also has the flexibility to coordinate the timing of its data backup to correspond to the specific requirements of each application. For example, the SBA continuously backs up constantly changing data, such as financial, employee and technical information, so they can recover data up to the moment of a data-loss event. For more static data, such as web and brochure content, the SBA schedules its backups for twice a day.

These capabilities have allowed the SBA to dramatically reduce the risk of operational disruption from a possible data-loss event, while removing the backup burden from its IT staff. "Our backup and data recovery operations are much more efficient than they used to be, and much simpler to administer now that the backup of each distributed location can be managed centrally," Adcock added. "We now know that all of our data is being backed up as it should be, when it should be, and that it is available for restore when we need it."

* Iron Mountain Success Story