Data Archiving - Best Practices

There are certain dos and don'ts of data archive that you must be aware of for ensuring that

the potential of this facility is made the best use of. Let us have a detailed analysis.

1) DO: Draw a clear demarcation line between data archiving and backing up solutions

In the recent years, certain mainstream vendors have tried to present data backing up and

archiving as the same concept. However, both are discrete functionalities with different

purposes.

Backups serve to facilitate data recovery. As opposed to this, archives are meant to store

information for longer durations and are not intended as disaster recovery tools.

Few healthcare providers refrain from backing up or replicating their archives as they

believe that altering of archived data is a taboo. Archives, like other IT mechanisms, are

liable to fail and result in corrupted documents.

An extra copy of archive should always be maintained although daily backups are not

recommended. Any organization that uses SAN or Storage Area Network should embrace

storage replication mechanism for ensuring presence of extra archived copy which

spontaneously updates itself or gets copied to the cloud for ready availability when disaster

strikes.

2) DON’T: Set up archive storage in a manner that can potentially crash if a single

constituting component gives away

Organizational priority is retaining critical information rather than spending significantly on

expensive storage devices for archiving is rarely accessed. Consequently, cheaper quality

hardware is procured for archiving data. This hardware is prone to fail unexpectedly, as a

single lapse can trigger entire damage, and result in massive loss of sensitive organizational

information. Such loss can result in levying of suitable penalties as per HIPAA regulations.

Storage system would experience costly downtime if a component fails prematurely,

although without causing any information loss. Archived content is accessed for critical

reasons and it imperative that the construction of the archive system should be strategic

enough to prevent any single point failure to drive total crash. Such proactive measure is

one of the data archiving best practices and would ensure zero data loss, corruption or

archive system outage.

3) DO: Define explicit policies for storing data in various storage tiers

A healthcare organization has mammoth volumes of information that are carefully stored

within its archive system. The concomitant cost of maintaining such archives can be

significant. To reduce the associated costs, organizations customarily use multi-tier storage.

A typical pattern is to distribute the archive amongst SAN, Cloud and tape/ disc storage

media.

Organizations need to formulate explicit policies to dictate the usage of different storage

tiers. The policy framing should take into perspective stored data’s average age, type or

criticality of data, frequency of access needed and other important factors. In case of

healthcare organizations, it is judicious to have patient’s health related information for past

few years stored on spinning disk for ready access, whereas antiquated information may be

stored on cloud or other devices. Such a move would streamline organizational performance

by allowing seamless storage archived data that needs frequent access while delegating

rarely accessed data to cheap storage devices or platforms.

4) DON’T: Accord equal importance to entire array of data for archiving purpose

The need for robust policies to govern archiving in different storage tiers based on

prioritized criteria is inevitable. Equally important is to understand that entire array of

documents cannot be homogenously treated for archiving purposes. Data types dictate the

mode of storage. The different media to be allocated for tier based storage is contingent on

retention needs of the organization. To instantiate this, we may consider a scenario wherein

the healthcare organization’s internal standards seek retention of patient’s health related

history for ten years after the patient’s demise whereas finance related documents need to

be safely stored for five years.

It is equally vital to realize that all data need not be sent to the archives. Garbage,

temporary files that has fulfilled the requirement for which it had been created should be

treated as trash and may not be stored. A relevant example is the case of PowerPoint

presentation that had been prepared to promote a medicine which has now become

obsolete.

5) DO: Initiate measures for automating data lifecycle management.

Manual intervention in the domain of archiving sensitive data from the perspective of

healthcare organizations, irrespective of the scale of operation or revenues, is neither

realistic nor logical. A volley of reasons renders manual archiving method unrealistic.

At the outset, archiving data manually calls for employment of dedicated staff which is a

recurring cost for the organization. Initially, this cost and related process might appear

manageable, but with passage of time and steep rise in the magnitude of organizational

data, the process may become uncontrollable and burdensome. Historic trends have proved

this fact numerous times. Data emanating from healthcare segment is getting amplified at

the rate of 40% annually.

Such an unwieldy proposition may appear affordable to some healthcare providers based on

long term projections. But, such a venture is wasteful from the perspective of utilizing the

time of IT professionals. You may appreciate the fact that deploying your erudite staff for

manual archiving process is not prudent as products related to automated data lifecycle

management are present to facilitate data archiving process.

Another argument in the favour of automated managing of data lifecycle is that consistently

performing manual archiving is tedious process. Any organization does not carry out manual

management on day to day basis. This may compel the IT professionals within the

organizational fabric to overlook regular management of lifecycle data and concentrate on

more important tasks at hand.

Another reason that decimates the validity of manually managing data lifecycle is that flaws

can inadvertently and surreptitiously creep in due to manual involvement. Accidental

deletion, assigning of data for archiving to unintended storage device or premature purging

can result in information loss. Such errors may lead to grim consequences for the healthcare

provider as mismanagement of patients’ health related documents may invite legal

penalties.

It is advisable and prudent to invest forthright in data lifecycle automation software. Such

an initiative to invest in a data archiving software program would lead to significant savings

in terms of employment costs and other overheads. It would also render the organization

immune from punitive action by concerned legal bodies.

6) DON’T: Take security of data seriously, particularly when using cloud for archiving

Stored content, although comprised of antiquated information, is critical. Any provider does

not undertake archiving unless such an action spell usefulness in future or facilitates

conforming to federal retention stipulations in the long haul. The document that has been

archived may pertain to financial records, safeguarded electronic health records,

employees’ personally identifiable information or other sensitive information. Such sensitive

archives need to be secured adequately. This assumes importance when cloud is used for

storage as the service does not fall under your operational purview.

As per the provisions of ‘The Omnibus rule’, providers of cloud services are considered as

business associates. The onus of security breach is shared by the organization with its

business partners. This makes it mandatory for the healthcare organization to ensure the

security provisions of HIPAA compliance of the partnered cloud media provider.

7) DO: Evaluate the advantages and vulnerabilities of different storage solutions

Data storage can be carried out in multiple ways. Each storage option has its own set of pros

and cons. Before finalizing the data archiving strategy, it is important to weigh the

advantages and disadvantages of the medium.

This can be instantiated by the fact that data storage cost per GB on tape is very low and the

medium can be relied upon. However, accessibility quotient is compromised as tape has to

be mounted prior to each data reading session. Tapes are portable and offer avenue for any

unauthorized person to copy the classified information easily. Tape tracking and security

mechanism have to be installed to monitor and authenticate tapes’ usage.

An option that is gaining in popularity is on-premises online archiving, wherein data is

stored by spinning disks on SAN or other network based device. The data can be accessed

readily and loss due to component failure is ruled out. However, the method is expensive

compared to removable devices. The storage mechanism is scalable but requires additional

infrastructural support in terms of more floor space and power costs. Once the storage

turns obsolete, one has to incur additional costs in terms of archive migration and hardware

upgrading.

Cloud storage data archiving system is cheaper than on-premise version and is scalable. The

only thing to remember is that documents storage would happen outside your operational

ambit. This means that the credentials of cloud service provider should be scrutinized

carefully for ensuring top notch security.

8) DON’T: Venture alone for automating data lifecycle management

Eventually, always keep in perspective that as a healthcare provider, you have to exhibit

optimum compliance to HIPAA data retention stipulations and can be subjected to punitive

action for incompliance. It is important that the decision to implement automated data

lifecycle management should be taken after due professional consultation with agencies

that assist IT section of healthcare providers in implementing robust archiving mechanisms

with state of the art solutions.

Thus only experienced digital archiving companies can ensure optimal data management

and archiving. It is therefore recommended to get indulged in an extensive brainstorming

process before you finalize your selection.