Agents Flock To Offsite Data Storage Options

Many turn to online storage outlets, but some also keep tape backups off-premises

Information and documents are an agency's lifeblood, so the storage of that information is a vital concern to agents and brokers everywhere.

While today's agent tends to mix and match among a number of different information storage methods and technologies, however, it appears many are turning to online storage for even their most critical documents.

Stuart Durland, vice president of Seely & Durland Inc., an agency in Warwick, N.Y., said he maintains both a main server and an imaging server. While all documents (except images) are first stored on the agency's main server, that server's hard drive is backed up daily to an online storage outlet Ebackup Inc., which is based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

“We have this online storage arrangement off-site, and they do multiple backups with a ton of redundancy and encryption,” said Mr. Durland, who is also the current president of ASCnet, the Applied Systems Users Group.

He noted that the agency's password for the service which is 16 digits long is kept in a safe deposit box off-site.

As for the documents on the imaging server's hard drive, they are backed up daily, with the information being transferred to two CDR disks at the end of each month, he explained. One disk is kept off-site in a safe deposit box at a local bank, while the other (along with a tape) is kept in a fireproof safe on the agency's premises.

In addition, the agency still uses “the old standby tape” for backup on both servers, according to Mr. Durland.

“We also have a fax server and it archives every fax we send out within the server,” he noted. These files are also backed up with those from the main server.

Once every document is backed up electronically, Mr. Durland said his agency uses a cross-cut shredder to destroy all paper documents.

Peter Anderson, president of Anderson Insurance Services in Marshfield, Mass., also uses Ebackup Inc. In his case, however, both imaging and database server documents are backed up via the online service.

Mr. Anderson said he became much more careful about data storage on Valentine's Day 2003, when his agency's RAID system failed. RAID (redundant array of independent disks) uses an array in independent hard drives to store “redundant” information from a computer system. Because it contains this information, it can prevent downtime when the original system hard disk fails, although data backup and recovery may still be necessary.

“When one of the agency's hard drives failed, it blew our RAID system,” Mr. Anderson stated. From that point, it took 42 hours to restore the files from backup tapes, with direct expenses approaching $5,000, he added.

Today, Anderson Insurance uses a RAID system with redundant “hot-swappable” drives in storage and “two cold spares ready to go at a moment's notice,” Mr. Anderson reported. A “hot-swappable” drive may be used to immediately replace a broken drive without having to shut down the system.

He added that the agency also maintains a mirrored hard drive for its database files. Information from Andersons imaging server and database server are collected nightly and sent over the agency's DSL computer connection to Ebackup Inc. “The whole thing takes 90 minutes to send, with encryption,” he said.

Information from the agency's fax server, however, goes onto the mirrored hard drive and is not taken off-site, Mr. Anderson explained. The agency also still does a quarterly tape backup on everything it has.

“All that lets us be back up and running in less than 24 hours,” he stated.

Another believer in remote storage is Michael Hofmeister, director of operations for Insurance Inc. in Owings Mills, Md. While customer information goes into a tape backup system each night, it is also sent off-premises via the Internet.

“Setting up a new server [in the event of a computer breakdown] is cheap,” said Mr. Hofmeister, noting that his data can be easily retrieved from the online service.

“In addition, for safety's sake, we do a lot of scanning in the personal lines department, so all of our images are stored separately on a server,” he continued. That information is then backed up on tape and on CD, along with data from the agency's fax database.

The tapes are kept for two weeks before being taped over in a new storage cycle, said Mr. Hofmeister. The agency maintains a fireproof safe for CD records, while the tape backups are removed from the premises each night.

Mr. Hofmeister said his agency has “no choice” but to become paperless.

“Many companies in personal lines are not sending paper anymore,” he noted. The main danger to paper documents is not from fire, he added, “but water causes the most damage” when efforts are made to extinguish fires.

After a fire, he noted, the data on paper files may remain intact in the ruins, “but the fire department may not let you back in to get it.”

However, “there's no such thing as paperless; everybody has some,” according to Roy Riley, chief operating officer for Peel & Holland in Benton, Ky.

Documents stored as paper at Peel & Holland include “anything that's not imaged into our document management system,” said Mr. Riley, who is also the current president of the AMS Users Group. Such documents are kept locked in fireproof file cabinets.

Electronic information from the agency's property-casualty customer database is stored in their agency management system AMS Sagitta “so it is actually at the AMS site,” said Mr. Riley.

A separate database is maintained for the agency's employee benefits operations, with information stored on the agency's in-house network.

Tape backup of electronic files is done nightly in a 10-tape rotation, with each tape being taped over every 10 days, Mr. Riley explained. The tapes are replaced by new tapes each year. Tape backups are stored off-site at an employee's home.

“We don't archive,” said Sallie Knighten, operations manager for ISU Francis-Pinney Insurance Services Inc. in Roseville, Calif. The agency does keep its images on a separate server, however, and those images are backed up on CD.

“Everything is there on the servers, and we back it up on tape every night and take it off-site,” she noted.

The agency also maintains a fireproof safe where backup tapes are kept on a five-week cycle. But, “month-end tapes do contain everything and they are kept off-site,” she added.

The agency's CD backups for the image servers are taken home by employees, with backups done once every three months, Ms. Knighten said. There is also a fax server whose files get backed up on tape.

The agency keeps life and p-c data on different servers and it has been “paperless since 1999,” she added.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, April 2, 2004. Copyright 2004 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved. Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.

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Agents Flock To Offsite Data Storage Options

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