Legacy Data Access

Off-Site Data
& Media Storage

The HAV, our High Availability Vault. Storage and production of data in one location.

A warehouse, or a bank vault?

When you move your corporate data assets to off-site data storage, do you want them stored in a warehouse, or in a steel and concrete encased former bank vault? S2|DATA believes that secure off-site data storage should be exactly that, and warehouse storage is not good enough.

S2|DATA has two high security former bank vaults in Atlanta, GA, situated on a 3-acre razor wire protected campus in extremely close proximity to fire and police protection. Security is not just a buzzword, it is literally built into the foundation of our facilities.

Why storage and data discovery belong in one place

As a forensic and data restoration company serving the legal and compliance market, often discovering data for use in litigation, we saw the same process repeat:

1
The legal team requests the investigation of data

2
IT operations instructs their off-site service provider to collect the required media

3
The media is transported to S2|DATA, where on receipt a chain of custody document is reconciled against a pick list

4
S2|DATA performs the restoration and discovery work, all within our vault

5
On completion, the process goes into reverse

The client was often subject to the following problems:

Depending on the quantity of media, it sometimes took weeks to get to the S2|DATA lab for work
The media list sometimes did not reconcile with the pick list provided
Transportation provided further risk of data theft, delay, or even loss

For many of our clients the solution was obvious: use S2|DATA for their off-site data storage. Knowing there was a possibility of further discoveries in the future, removing the risk associated with transportation, logistics, off-site storage and production was a top priority. S2|DATA’s High Availability Vault provides the means of storage and production of data in one location.

The complete offering enables us to exceed the performance of any combination of separate vendors, and to achieve two of our three guiding tenets: a faster time to data, and eliminating cost and risk.

What we store

Tape cartridges, in secured bins or in slotted storage (Gemtrac)
Hard disk, SSD and other media, internal and external, including RAID arrays and thumb drives
Laptops, PCs and servers
Smartphones and tablets
Complete backup infrastructure, including disaster recovery systems and emulated environments or VMs
Bankers boxes

Security features

Isolation from any other business

9 feet razor wired perimeter

18 inch concrete and steel facility with no windows

Mosler steel vaults

2 key lockboxes

Biometric access, external and internal movement

CCTV with long term recording

Alarm system with contracted response

Fire station 100 yards from the operation

ISO 27001 certified

INDEPENDENTLY CERTIFIED

One Time Backup and Archive On Demand

Many businesses are in the data services business without even realizing it. Law firms, for example, are provided with extremely sensitive and proprietary data pertaining to their clients, and assume a custodial role over those records, which imparts upon them a duty to protect and preserve them. If you are a law firm with thousands of clients, the associated risk can amplify rather quickly. A typical way to mitigate this risk is a one-time backup or archive.

While these businesses often have data security and disaster recovery plans in place to protect and preserve their own data along with their clients’, hackers are always one step ahead of these solutions. Security solutions are often reactive, meaning they are created to address problems which have already occurred to someone else. There is no guaranteed way to ensure that you are protected, and evaluating and adding a continuous stream of expensive products designed to keep your data online is an expensive and daunting task.

So what is the solution? It is the time-tested backup tape. A one-time backup to tape creates an air-gapped method of producing point-in-time snapshots of data that hackers cannot access once created, provided they are removed from the backup system.

S2|DATA is not in the game of creating backup applications, but we are experts at using and restoring from them. We are also experts at vaulting services, and at providing insight into large pools of previously backed up data with our proprietary technologies TRACS and Invenire. This service is particularly aimed at providers who hold their clients’ data. That includes eDiscovery practitioners, digital forensic practitioners and law firms. Anyone that has provided a service to process, search or preserve data that may be litigation sensitive. It can be employed once only, to catch up on all the disparate data you have, or on a more routine basis such as once per month.

The process is simple:

1
We consult with you to determine approximately how much data you have, and how and where it is stored

2
We prepare the necessary equipment to come on-site and back it up to tape

3
We create a duplicate copy, one for your retention and one for our vault

4
Once the tapes return to our vault, we perform a forensic scan, which captures the file-level detail present on the tapes backed up

5
That detail is ingested into Invenire on AWS, our review platform, and we provide you with login credentials. This enables you to locate particular files in seconds, should you have a requirement to know what you have

6
The tapes are securely stored off-line, so file content is not accessible to any would-be hacker

7
At this point you can either continue operation as normal, knowing that your historical client data is accessible to that date point should you be hit with ransomware, or you can purge the systems and redeploy them, reclaiming all that storage space and processing power

Contact an S2|DATA backup and restore expert to discuss whether a one-time backup might be right for your situation.

Read the full One Time Backup & Archive On Demand detail.