Will my information be sufficiently protected while offsite?

The safety and security of your information will likely be a primary concern when selecting an offsite tape storage company.

You may wish to visit prospective vendors to get a feel for the physical environment your tapes will be stored in and to understand how your tapes will be transported back and forth to your data center.

Physical building

Ensure top-of-the-line fire protection measures are in place such as vault firewalls and chemical fire suppression system. To protect your tapes from accidental water damage, ideally there will be no water sprinkler systems nor water pipes of any type running through the vault area.

To ensure the long-term preservation and readability of your tapes, find out if environmental controls keep the vault at constant temperature and humidity levels and if backup systems are in place for both environmental control and power.

Make sure sufficient security measures are in place, such as recorded video monitoring and multi-layer access controls employing biometrics. Ideally, your vendor should have third party alarm monitoring for unauthorized access as well as for environmental conditions such as water infiltration and temperature and humidity variance.

Transport vehicles

Your vendor's vehicles can give you an indication as to whether they take seriously the protection of your information. Vehicles should not have windows; cargo areas should be self-locking, double-locked and alarmed to deter break-ins.

Vehicles should be GPS tracked so that the whereabouts of your data is known at all times.