Performance and control problem in data loss crisis management

Data Loss can give nightmares to most corporate and cause irreparable damage to the function and image of an organization.

Organizations dealing with such a situation often turn towards crisis management experts and procedures which they believe can salvage their situation. However a simple belief in itself is unlikely save a sinking ship and often organizations need to be on top of their game to come out unscratched. KPIs serve as real saviors in such situations as a crisis management plan based on carefully selected KPIs can go a long way in restoring data and confidence of the organization.

Devising fool proof techniques to mitigate data loss is often frequented with numerous challenges which range from human initiative to technical architectural adjustments. One of the challenges can be due to the lack of IT infrastructure. Plethora of storage, application and server platforms exist which cause hurdles in their integration. In addition to this, all the data may not be equally valuable to the organization so a screening to preserve the important data and discard the not so important one is a must. Data loss might occur in such a process. Besides these, another complication arises from the change in value of data with time. These challenges can be overcome by using proprietary disaster recovery solutions requiring protocol converters. Another problematic situation stems from the data replication issue. Synchronous Replication, which emphasizes the having an up-to-date remote copy of the data works well with a local SAN environment but in WAN environment, significant latency problems and degrad ati

on problems crop up in critical business applications. This leads to disruption of business operations.

KPIs needs to be specified for key initiatives involved in negotiating data loss. To start with KPIs needs to be devised for human initiatives. Some of them may include Data Loss Issues, which can be assessed by measures like no. of Human Errors, Technological Failures, Natural disasters and Data and system Management failures. Human Initiatives may be evaluated using parameters like Technology Training Sessions, Motivational Programs and percentage of employees with authorized access. The next category, Technology Initiatives may be taken care of by no. of Back-up Programs, Encryption and Virus Detection Systems. Lastly, Data and System Management Initiatives might be done through Data Integration, Secondary storage and average time-period of upgradation of systems.

KPIs help in combating the mentioned challenges and formulating the ways to overcome them. This is achieved by having KPIs arranged on a balanced scorecard and assigning values to them. Further, the diversion from the standard values is calculated and steps to improve them are undertaken.

Mitigating issues with data loss has a lot to do with proper planning which KPI augment through their intrinsic evaluation parameters. Quite naturally more and more companies are turning towards devising customized KPI for their crisis management efforts related to data loss. What though needs to be understood is that a diligent evaluation of all parameters is needed and KPIs so chosen needs to reflect this judgment.