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March Edition
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MediaMerge/Tape
Management System (MM/TMS) Released
Forensic
Technology: A Rose by Any Other Name...
MediaMerge/Tape Management System (MM/TMS) Released
In a nutshell MM/TMS is a complete software solution for post-backup media management. It works in concert with your existing backup software to drive and enforce your corporate vaulting, retention and media lifetime policies. With unmatched flexibility MM/TMS is able to run on most any combination of midrange, open systems and PC platforms.
Media Vaulting: Moving Your Media to a Secure Place
If your organization makes backups to prepare for disaster recovery or for statutory requirements, then you are most likely moving your media to a secure offsite storage location. Managing this process, called vault management (or simply vaulting), is the primary mission of MM/TMS.
MM/TMS allows you to define schedules called vaulting policies appropriate to each type and physical location of your data. It drives the movement of media from the originating site to any number of secure offsite facilities while providing media inventory and search capabilities that leave you in control of your media.
Once your policies are defined, MM/TMS drives compliance without further management intervention. Your vaulting schedules and policies are used to generate daily move list tasks instructing operators what media is to be moved, where and when. Our software will only allow each task to be marked as complete after the operator has successfully performed an inventory on the outgoing media using a barcode scanner.
Media Retention: Protecting the Data Stored on Your Tapes
Once a backup is created, the data residing on that backup is only useful for a particular time interval, referred to as the retention policy. The retention policy can vary widely according to the nature of the data involved. A backup of mortgage data might remain useful for up to 47 years, while other data may only require retention for a few weeks. MM/TMS allows you to define retention policies - and enforce them using our inventory and accountability features.
Media Lifetime: Ensuring that the Media is Fit to Store a Backup
What happens if you use a tape beyond the manufacturer's recommended lifetime? In some cases the tape may be worn beyond the point it can be read. The question then becomes, when will you discover this problem? During a critical disaster recovery? Is any of your current media being used past its recommended lifetime? If so, how would you know?
MediaMerge/TMS helps to reduce this risk by tracking media mounts and lifetime at the tape volume level. Once you define a lifetime for a particular media type, MM/TMS will prevent the use of any media beyond that lifetime. On a daily basis operators are given a list of retired media which is enforced by the same inventory and accountability features used for vaulting and retention. With MM/TMS media tracking, you will never suffer a failed restore from using media past end-of-life again.
These are just some of the ways that MM/TMS can help you manage your post-backup media environment. As this current time, we are accepting beta site contracts, and we'll be able to further customize the software to meet your needs. Download a copy today to get started or contact us if you have any additional questions.
Forensic Technology: A Rose by Any Other Name...
This article is the first in a three part series discussing the use of forensic technology in order to perform investigations and/or provide electronic evidence to courts of law. This series will present a high-level overview of electronic evidence and is not intended to be viewed as a source of training, but rather an informative overview.
American Heritage Dictionary defines the word "forensic" as "Relating to the use of science or technology in the investigation and establishment of facts or evidence in a court of law." Taken in the context of electronic information, how does the definition differ from "Electronic Evidence" or "Electronic Discovery"?
The answer lies in who is providing the response. When attempting to use "...technology in the investigation and establishment of facts or evidence in a court of law" there are three primary and distinct procedural elements that must occur: collection, examination, and presentation. eMag Solutions provides a services portfolio that encompasses all three of these elements.
Collection
Assembly and collection of electronic information can be a daunting and expensive task. When trying to prove who-knew-what-and-when, accessing the data in its current location or simply copying data to an alternative location for examination can severely impact the integrity of the data. Metadata, or data about the data, is modified in different ways by different computer operating systems, but critical information such as the "last accessed" or "last modified" date/time stamps, and "last accessed by" information is fairly consistent across most. Without proper preservation of information prior to collection, data can be irreparably modified.
Preservation
The most common method of data preservation is bit-by-bit duplication of the original storage media. Upon duplicating the original source data, restoration and examination of the data can commence. In order to ensure that the original data remains intact, any activities performed to examine data should occur on the duplicate media (with the exception of tape and optical media), not the original. This is especially true of hard disk media. When dealing with tape media or optical media, duplication of the original media is not necessary, as data on the media is not altered as it is read. With tape media, duplication is advisable because tape does break and drives do sometimes malfunction and damage the media.
Restoration
Once the source media has been procured and a duplication of the media made, restoring the entire data population or selective information is often the next task. When dealing with hard disk media, accessing the data is as simple as attaching the media to a computer and reading the data with an operating system capable of reading file system with which it was written. Additionally, there is a plethora of third-party software tools that allow for hard disk examination, regardless of the file system used.
What do you do when you need to restore data from backup tapes or
optical media?
What do you do when the data on these media are 5
years old?
Backup software packages that write to backup tapes and optical media are plentiful, proprietary, but many vendors in existence five years ago are no longer around today. Even if they are, they typically drop support for their software that is older than two years leaving you to fend for yourself with data you cannot access. You have to find the original software, if you can, find the older operating system on which it ran, if you can, find the hardware on which it ran, if you can, and then hope that everything works as it was originally intended. This process is called recreating the native environment. The dirty little secret in the world of archiving software is that it is far easier to write data than it is to recover data once you change the version of your software.
If you need assistance with the restoration of data or have any questions about eMag's forensic and electronic evidence solutions, please contact us today.
Coming in April
Examination
Coming in May
Presentation
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