Can I protect my tapes without using an offsite rotation service?

It is possible to manage your own offsite data protection program without using a tape rotation service.

Alternatives

You can have your own employees take your tapes home at night, move the tapes to a different company-owned building, or transfer the tapes to a bank vault.

While these alternatives come at a lower monthly cost than a third party rotation service, they also come with higher risk.

Risks

The most significant risk of a do-it-yourself strategy for moving tapes offsite is the potential for tapes to be lost or stolen while in transit (real-life examples have included car break-ins and lost briefcases).

Such events trigger breach notification and credit monitoring requirements when the tapes contain personally identifiable information.

A secondary risk is that tapes may be exposed to extreme heat or cold -for example in the trunk of a car - rendering them unreadable.