U.S. Small Business Administration Shores Up Disaster Recovery Plan with Iron Mountain Off-Site Data Protection

Business Wire, Dec 2, 2002

Business Editors

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 2, 2002

Iron Mountain's Electronic Vaulting Service Eases the Burden of Data

Backup and Recovery Across Government Agency's Many Locations

Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE:IRM), the leader in outsourced records and information management services, today announced that the U.S. Small Business Administration has adopted Electronic Vaulting, powered by LiveVault(R), for data backup and recovery services across the agency's 90 regional and branch offices.

Since 1953, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has assisted nearly 20 million U.S. businesses. The agency's many programs include providing management assistance, specialized outreach to women, minorities and armed forces veterans, and federal contract procurement assistance. With a portfolio of approximately 219,000 loans worth more than $45 billion, the SBA is also the single largest financial backer of U.S. businesses in the nation.

The SBA understands first-hand that disaster can strike at any moment -- a significant portion of its loan portfolio consists of low-interest disaster relief loans. In order to protect its assets and the assets of its customers, the SBA has implemented a comprehensive disaster recovery plan at its headquarters in Washington, D.C., and nationwide across all 90 of its regional and branch offices.

Data backup and recovery had long been the most challenging component of the SBA's disaster recovery plan, requiring daily attention and coordination across each of its locations. The agency had been relying on tape-based backup systems. However, it was virtually impossible for the SBA's IT department to ensure that every location was consistently backing up its data properly and vaulting it off site on a regular basis. There was significant risk of operational disruption due to the possibility of an office losing critical data due to a human error, system failure, server crash or broader disaster.

"We realized that we didn't have the adequate in-house resources to protect our data. We had dual requirements: backing up our data in a reliable fashion, and storing it off site," said Kevin Adcock, computing specialist for the SBA. "We needed a bullet-proof solution that would take all the guesswork out of our backup and recovery operations."

Iron Mountain's Electronic Vaulting significantly reduces the challenges associated with backing up servers in multiple locations without adequate in-house resources. The service automatically backs up server data over the Internet and stores it off site in a secure Iron Mountain vault. Critical data is always backed up and can be immediately restored, if necessary, through a simple Web-based user interface. The element of human error is removed from backup and recovery operations.

Because Iron Mountain's Electronic Vaulting is Web-based, the SBA has been able to replace its more than 90 separate backup and recovery operations with a single, automated online backup and recovery solution that spans all locations. SBA now also has the flexibility to coordinate the timing of its data backup to correspond to the specific requirements of each application.

Iron Mountain's solutions for vaulting and protecting corporate back-up data off site ensure the safety, integrity, and availability of business data should disaster strike. Services range from secure, convenient data transport and off-site vaulting of backup data, to electronic data protection and complete disaster-recovery support services.

About Iron Mountain

Iron Mountain Incorporated was founded in 1951 as one of the first records management companies. Today, Iron Mountain is the global leader in records and information management services. Iron Mountain currently provides services to over 150,000 customer accounts in 81 markets in the United States and 47 markets outside of the United States. The Company operates more than 650 records management facilities in the United States, Canada, Europe and Latin America. For more information, visit the Company's Web site at www.ironmountain.com.

About LiveVault Corporation

LiveVault Corporation is the leading provider of fully managed online data backup and recovery services. LiveVault automatically and continuously backs up server data, and protects it in a secure, remote Iron Mountain vault, and makes it immediately available for recovery 7x24. Through its partnerships with Iron Mountain (NYSE: IRM), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), Microsoft (NasdaqNM: MSFT), and others, LiveVault helps ensure the business continuity of mid-sized businesses, as well as distributed offices of larger enterprises. Founded in 1993, LiveVault is based in Marlborough, Mass. For more information visit www.livevault.com or call (508) 460-6670.