Abstract

Organisations seem to assume that their employees understand what amounts to critical business data and that such data is appropriately protected. However, identification of critical business data is a rather complex undertaking and determines what data is protected in case of a disaster. Data is the company’s greatest asset and is continually under threat from human error, technological failure, natural disasters and other external factors. These threats need to be identified and quantified in order to apply relevant protection techniques. Every organisation should also understand the business value of its data in order to realise the importance of protecting the data. The key to developing an effective data preservation and protection system is to identify critical business data in order to develop protection strategies relevant to the level of data criticality. Another variable that complicates the development of a comprehensive data protection system is fact that an organisation’s data often reside on different mediums. This article investigates the difficulties organisations face in protecting and preserving critical business data. The research followed a qualitative approach starting with a detailed literature review to identify trends in the protection of critical business data followed by interviews to delve deeper into the possible sources of problems identified in the literature. The findings show the main problem to be a lack of understanding of what entails an organisation’s critical business data and information.

Key words: Backup and restore, business continuity, data preservation, data storage, disaster recovery, data lifecycle management, critical business data.