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Sooner or later, disasters happen to every computer user. They delete important files, on purpose or accidentally. Or they update a document and save it, overwriting the original version.The common practice of using an existing document, spreadsheet, or presentation as a starting point for a new one often ends in catastrophe when the user forgets to save the changes under a new file name.
Careers end on such errors. Or worse. With the strict document-retention requirements imposed by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, corporations that destroy records risk severe fines; employees could even wind up in prison.
Defining the problem is simple: files that should not be deleted often are, on individual PCs and file servers. The immediate challenge is recovering them. Dealing with the larger, longterm issue of prevention and retention on a corporate-wide scale is more complex. Products that attempt to recover deleted files have been around as long as personal computers themselves, but have a history of delivering mixed results. Today, Microsoft Windows itself offers the recycle bin for just this purpose. The shortcoming is that these solutions, by definition, are after-the-fact fixes. None represents a preventative solution. They cannot resurrect a file that has been overwritten, and they make no attempt to archive the many revisions that a typical document goes through in its lifetime. Stronger measures are needed. Fortunately, such a solution is available today.
The Unseen Expense
The mathematics of accidental file erasure is alarming. A PC user is likely to spend an average of one hour in a frantic effort to recover the file (or files, or an entire directory) before turning to the help desk. Just two occurrences per day ? a conservative estimate for a corporate environment ? translates to a minimum annual productivity loss of 520 hours, nearly 14 40- hour weeks.Office colleagues, in their attempts to help, add to lost productivity and are more likely to hurt, not help, any chance of success.
Once the IT department gets involved, costs add up quickly.With an IT technician earning $30 an hour,a single 30-minute venture to locate and restore a file from a backup tape ? if it's there at all ? costs $15. While $15 does not seem like much, in a corporate environment, repeating that process twice a day costs $7,800 over a full year.) Tied up for 260 hours, the total quantifiable cost for user and IT is nearly 21 work weeks, the equivalent of five months from one full-time employee.
Clearly, recovering a deleted file from a local hard drive or perhaps from a prior day's backup tapes is an expensive, time-consuming, productivity-robbing process. That's if it can be done at all. And should a crucial file be unrecoverable, the cost to the business itself could be incalculable.
But there's more.
The Long Arm of the Law
In the course of a workday, workers create, modify and delete Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.As changes are made, little regard is paid to archiving original versions of these documents. Files no longer needed are either deleted or overwritten.
That's no longer good enough. In response to the multibillion-dollar misdeeds of several major
corporations,Congress responded,enacting the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. It changed the rules for document retention within public corporations and imposes severe penalties for offenders. Sections 802 and 1102 of the Act amend the federal obstruction of justice statute, greatly increasing the penalties for the criminal destruction, alteration, and falsification of records in certain circumstances.
Under Section 802, anyone who knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in a document with intent to impede, obstruct or influence the investigation or administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of a federal department or agency or any bankruptcy case is subject to a fine and imprisonment for up to 20 years. Similarly, under Section 1102, anyone who corruptly alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record or document with intent to impair its integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding is subject to the same penalty.
Should you wait for the government to come swooping down on your company before implementing a document-retention plan? Certainly not.
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