Companies Are Storing Your Data on Tape Again

Megalith

Megalith

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To stay up-to-date in the battle against hackers, some companies are turning to a 1950s technology: while storing data on tape seems impossibly inconvenient in an age of easy-access cloud computing, hackers have no way to get at the information. The federal government, financial-services firms, health insurers and other regulated industries still keep tape as a backup to digital records.

Rob Pritchard, founder of the Cyber Security Expert consulting firm and associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, has noticed the steady resurgence of tape as part of best-practice backup strategies. “Companies of all sizes must be able to restore data quickly if needed,” he says, “but also have a robust, slower-time, recovery mechanism should the worst happen.” Pritchard, who works with a range of organizations to improve corporate cybersecurity practices, says: “A good backup strategy will have multiple layers. Cloud and online services have their place, but can be compromised.”
 
Physical media for backups is still not a bad idea by any means but tape? Discs can do what tape does now and more but maybe not from a cost per gigabyte standard YET.
 
Or they can just, you know, keep it OFF the network? Why is it so difficult to have a stand alone station with an access terminal and printer. Print hard copies of what you need and make sure that station is never connected to the network. Our office does this when reviewing especially sensitive information.
 
Rahh said:
Physical media for backups is still not a bad idea by any means but tape? Discs can do what tape does now and more but maybe not from a cost per gigabyte standard YET.
Click to expand...

All archival media has it's downfalls, tape probably works better/easier for some as unfortunately some places still use AS400 from the early 90s and earlier.
 
NickJames said:
Or they can just, you know, keep it OFF the network? Why is it so difficult to have a stand alone station with an access terminal and printer. Print hard copies of what you need and make sure that station is never connected to the network. Our office does this when reviewing especially sensitive information.
Click to expand...

what then have to go down some stairs or elevator and a hallway to get some files?

bullshit!
 
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Works for me, and if the tape degrades after 15-20 years all the better! I mean having one of those letters "Your personal identity might have been compromised" from a school I applied to 12 years earlier because... the fuck do I know why they kept that data, is just criminal
 
At my last job, we used LTO5 tape for offline/long term storage (monthly, yearly backups). For use cases where your time to recover can allow for bringing tape back from an Iron Mountain or similar off site secure storage, tape still makes a lot of sense. The tech has been around a long time, is very reliable and cost effective. Looks like the current gen is LTO7 with a few new gens already planned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open
 
Tapes are cheap, they are incredibly low-tech (low physical failure rate when done properly), and are kind of bullet-proof. The only thing they suck at is speed, they are a slow medium to write or read data from. That's honestly the only reason they fell out of favor, people imagined archiving to optical media or then, ultimately, drive-farms....but the failure rate and cost of replacements is super high for this tech and it requires a constant investment in a system that must be maintained (on demand archiving).......tapes you write-to and then send to a cool underground location and you're good for 100 years.
 
NickJames said:
Or they can just, you know, keep it OFF the network? Why is it so difficult to have a stand alone station with an access terminal and printer. Print hard copies of what you need and make sure that station is never connected to the network. Our office does this when reviewing especially sensitive information.
Click to expand...

How do you get it OFF network? What data do you have that isn't tied into anything else you do? Your records are tied into online databases, your finances are tied into online databases. So much of the information is being moved between things that off network isn't a possibility for most data. The reason why everything was brought online was so that you didn't have warehouses filled with paperwork that can easily walk out the door, or having to send that information through the mail or fax where it's anyone's guess what happened in between travels.

I agree that getting media onto disk is great if possible, but disks are not always the best replacement unfortunately. The issue you'll run into is how to actually get the data onto disk. If you have 100TB of data you need to backup, you need to come up with a way to get it there first. Moving that over the internet is going to be difficult, and if you try to use a cloud provider you're going to end up in a situation where your backups are always online. The same thing tends to apply with HDDs, unless you are using single disks, you probably set those up into an array, so to backup to that location the device needs to be online and connected. The reason why tapes work is that you can physically disconnect them from anything, and store them where they can't be accessed. I wonder if someone has a solution where you can just using HDDs as singles and pop them in and out of a hotswap enclosure to do your backups on? I think that would be easier to deal with than tapes, but it would definitely cost a lot more.
 
bman212121 said:
How do you get it OFF network? What data do you have that isn't tied into anything else you do? Your records are tied into online databases, your finances are tied into online databases. So much of the information is being moved between things that off network isn't a possibility for most data. The reason why everything was brought online was so that you didn't have warehouses filled with paperwork that can easily walk out the door, or having to send that information through the mail or fax where it's anyone's guess what happened in between travels.

I agree that getting media onto disk is great if possible, but disks are not always the best replacement unfortunately. The issue you'll run into is how to actually get the data onto disk. If you have 100TB of data you need to backup, you need to come up with a way to get it there first. Moving that over the internet is going to be difficult, and if you try to use a cloud provider you're going to end up in a situation where your backups are always online. The same thing tends to apply with HDDs, unless you are using single disks, you probably set those up into an array, so to backup to that location the device needs to be online and connected. The reason why tapes work is that you can physically disconnect them from anything, and store them where they can't be accessed. I wonder if someone has a solution where you can just using HDDs as singles and pop them in and out of a hotswap enclosure to do your backups on? I think that would be easier to deal with than tapes, but it would definitely cost a lot more.
Click to expand...

Depends what the company is trying to secure. At my office when we have to submit child pornography exhibits for trial we have to make hard copies only and the electronic data can never be removed or sent between any other agency other than FBI and accessed on non-networked computers only. The government has also gotten stricter on securing personally identifiable information by not storing it anywhere outside of the local network.
 
How is this going to make things more secure? It sounds like they're just using it for archiving backups. Which means that anything relevant is going to still be stored network based.

I think companies are just using it as a disaster backup (e.g. the Mr. Robot scenario). Tape backup makes sense for that.

Remember, when it comes to a lot of these companies the priority isn't to safeguard your information from leakage, it's to safeguard your information from destruction - you can't collect on bills/debt that you no longer have data on.
 
I've got news for you, companies never stopped using tape. Of course, some individual companies did, but not all of them. The backups being offline and not easily accessible does increase security, but the real reason why many companies never stopped was cost per GB of doing backups. Real time data replication, disaster recovery sites, disk pools and other such methods have their downsides and their upsides but the reality is the cost difference between that and tape is staggering.
 
Rahh said:
Physical media for backups is still not a bad idea by any means but tape? Discs can do what tape does now and more but maybe not from a cost per gigabyte standard YET.
Click to expand...
Wrong.
  • Easy Storage - Most tape formats offer a large storage capacity in a relatively small physical package. Cartridges like LTO-6 give businesses an easy way to back up enterprise-level systems without dedicating entire rooms to server hardware.

  • Dependability - Tape cartridges are not particularly susceptible to physical or electronic damage. They can safely store data for years or decades without suffering from problematic media decay or corruption. However, you need to protect tapes from excessive humidity and extreme temperatures.

  • Low Overall Costs - Tapes cost less in terms of electricity and administration. Media is also fairly affordable in the long-term.

  • Simple Replication - Large businesses can easily make physical copies of mission-critical tape backups. Many formats offer advanced encryption features for enhanced security, which improves the utility of each individual backup.
 
HeadRusch said:
Tapes are cheap, they are incredibly low-tech (low physical failure rate when done properly), and are kind of bullet-proof. The only thing they suck at is speed, they are a slow medium to write or read data from. That's honestly the only reason they fell out of favor, people imagined archiving to optical media or then, ultimately, drive-farms....but the failure rate and cost of replacements is super high for this tech and it requires a constant investment in a system that must be maintained (on demand archiving).......tapes you write-to and then send to a cool underground location and you're good for 100 years.
Click to expand...
Yeah, this is usually the case if the backup systems are well maintained and looked after. The tapes themselves are pretty robust but the big problem is the drives can suddenly take dump. You have to have another ready to hot swap in.
The last company I worked for maintained thousands of these for small business. We would just hot swap the drives and send the dead ones off to service company that rebuilt them.
 
I use tapes to backup my data. It's shocking how much data you can cram for little to no $$$ using tech that is 3-5yrs old. Great for that 3-2-1 backup schema.
 
HeadRusch said:
Tapes are cheap, they are incredibly low-tech (low physical failure rate when done properly), and are kind of bullet-proof. The only thing they suck at is speed, they are a slow medium to write or read data from. That's honestly the only reason they fell out of favor, people imagined archiving to optical media or then, ultimately, drive-farms....but the failure rate and cost of replacements is super high for this tech and it requires a constant investment in a system that must be maintained (on demand archiving).......tapes you write-to and then send to a cool underground location and you're good for 100 years.
Click to expand...
I was wondering who would say it first.

It's a matter of cost, and always has been.
Tape is incredibly cheap
 
Dan_D said:
I've got news for you, companies never stopped using tape. Of course, some individual companies did, but not all of them. The backups being offline and not easily accessible does increase security, but the real reason why many companies never stopped was cost per GB of doing backups. Real time data replication, disaster recovery sites, disk pools and other such methods have their downsides and their upsides but the reality is the cost difference between that and tape is staggering.
Click to expand...
I know... People are surprised that tape is still being used? LTO 7 tapes have only been around 2 years and they store 12TB per tape. It's still the cheapest way to archive data. Even LTO 5 tapes with 3TB capacity are still useful and at under $20 a tape and much cheaper than any disk based solution.
 
kohl said:
At my last job, we used LTO5 tape for offline/long term storage (monthly, yearly backups). For use cases where your time to recover can allow for bringing tape back from an Iron Mountain or similar off site secure storage, tape still makes a lot of sense. The tech has been around a long time, is very reliable and cost effective. Looks like the current gen is LTO7 with a few new gens already planned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open
Click to expand...


Yup. We do primarily disk backups, but for LONG term storage (multi-year retentions),or for legal archive of data related to lawsuits we still use small tape based autoloaders. Current model is Scalar I3, 6 - 15TB per tape.... Fast as hell and nearly automated.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
Yeah, this is usually the case if the backup systems are well maintained and looked after. The tapes themselves are pretty robust but the big problem is the drives can suddenly take dump. You have to have another ready to hot swap in.
The last company I worked for maintained thousands of these for small business. We would just hot swap the drives and send the dead ones off to service company that rebuilt them.
Click to expand...

I would figure the tape mechanisms are what wears out, hoping they aren't using belts in those things but you never know. But yeah, tapes have always made sense. Not so much for music anymore, but data is a completely different story.

Plus, then there's *this* thing ;)

 
i'd like to back up all my porn onto a tape.

Does tape still work if the tape is cut?
 
Rahh said:
Physical media for backups is still not a bad idea by any means but tape? Discs can do what tape does now and more but maybe not from a cost per gigabyte standard YET.
Click to expand...

Actually.. this is very true. The cost of Physical media is almost at parity with the cost of Tapes. With the new 10 TB drives coming out it may surprass that. BUT... if your business is UL certified.. you may be stuck on tapes until they get the technology requirements under their belt to understand how the Physical media is better/equal to magnetic media.

We all thought WORM drives and other types of digital media storage would replace tapes. Except for oneoffs really it isn't. SAS drives I think will eventually replace Tape Libraries.. but only time will tell.
 
ianken said:
Tape is not going away. It's data-dense and lasts.
Click to expand...

Yep.

My company uses an IBM TS4500 tape library and each tape cartridge (TS 1150 maybe? I forget the IBM model #) holds 15TB uncompressed. The entire library when fully loaded has something like an 8 PETAbyte capacity. Yeah. We have 4 large SAN libraries and this thing can back them all up, pretty quickly too. Can't keep SAN snapshots forever, those eat up space like crazy even with modern de-dup systems.

I spent years working at a bank with huge Storagetek robotic vaults like the 5500, 8500, etc. Those things were stuffed with LTO drives (LTO 2/3 was common back then, 200/300 GB per tape, I think the modern version is LTO7 or 8 and might be up to a TB by now). Still in use I'm sure.

People laugh about tape, but for sheer cost of storage, and ease of use to store data offsite basically forever.... tape will be with us for a long long time.

I remember back when people predicted optical disc storage would obsolete tape. Yeah that didn't happen. But the modern tape carts use optical tracking on the tape, the tape is basically a huge linear DVD.
 
Burticus said:
People laugh about tape, but for sheer cost of storage, and ease of use to store data offsite basically forever.... tape will be with us for a long long time.
Click to expand...

I've been using/supporting tape backups since the days of the original IBM XT (10mb tape drive)

I remember the DC600a tapes (60MB), and the late 150mb, 250mb, and 525mb versions.
The Irwin tape drives that connected to the floppy controller (boy where they slow)
Then the Dat and Exabyte tapes (1GB, 2GB, 5GB)
Next the DLT tapes that eventually hit 100GB
Finally the LTO drives. LTO 1 started at 100GB, and now the LTO 7 is 6TB
They already have the specs for LTO 8 & LTO 9, so tapes will be around for long time.


I currently use a LTO 6 changer with 24 tapes. With compression, I usually get about 4.5TB per tape (uncompressed tape size is 2.6TB).
That's over 100TB worth of tape storage available.
I'd like to upgrade to LTO 7, but the tape costs per TB are more than double the older LTO 6 tapes, so I'm stuck juggling more tapes fro now.

I have a backup server with a 50TB raid that backs up the data from multiple servers several times a day.
The data is then copied to tapes over the weekend, and the tapes are taken off site.
Couldn't imagine trying to shuffle a couple dozen external USB drives and taking them off-site.
I also couldn't imagine trying to backup that many TB's of data to the cloud. Just the weekly churn (new/changed data) would likely max out my internet pipe for most the week.

If you only have a couple TB of data on 1 or 2 servers, then consider the Cloud.
If your backup will easily fit on a single external USB drive, then that is also an option. (just make sure you have multiple drives and always have the most recent one off-site).
If you have more than 8 TB, or need to keep your backups for more than a few weeks, then you really should be looking at tape or even a tape changer.
 
Still trying to find a paper tape of Tiny Basic for PDP8.
Specifically, the version someone hacked from Focal.
I promise to keep it offline, and away from termites.
 
Megalith said:
To stay up-to-date in the battle against hackers, some companies are turning to a 1950s technology: while storing data on tape seems impossibly inconvenient in an age of easy-access cloud computing, hackers have no way to get at the information. The federal government, financial-services firms, health insurers and other regulated industries still keep tape as a backup to digital records.

Rob Pritchard, founder of the Cyber Security Expert consulting firm and associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, has noticed the steady resurgence of tape as part of best-practice backup strategies. “Companies of all sizes must be able to restore data quickly if needed,” he says, “but also have a robust, slower-time, recovery mechanism should the worst happen.” Pritchard, who works with a range of organizations to improve corporate cybersecurity practices, says: “A good backup strategy will have multiple layers. Cloud and online services have their place, but can be compromised.”
Click to expand...

Instead of using offline awkward slow storage with effectively no random access (if you want data quickly), power the hard drives down when not needed.
It gives the same benefit against hackers.
Firewall with a remote machine as you would with a tape machine as necessary, the same precautions should be used in this regard.
But why cut off your nose if you dont need to.
 
Last edited:
One thing I noticed was the tendency of people to have a lot of confidence when they had that backup tape in their fist. We tried to sell the idea of cloud backups and even serverless offices to a lot of businesses were we automatically administered their data and backups and they didn't like the idea. Nothing to clinch in their fist and make them feel better.
 
Nenu said:
Instead of using offline awkward slow storage with effectively no random access (if you want data quickly), power the hard drives down when not needed.
It gives the same benefit against hackers.
Firewall with a remote machine as you would with a tape machine as necessary, the same precautions should be used in this regard.
But why cut off your nose if you dont need to.
Click to expand...

simple answer:

5 years after power down, a tape doesn't give a shit about it.
Your HDD is unlikely to still be working correctly. Or, the data is likely corrupted by time.
 
Guarana [BAWLS] said:
simple answer:

5 years after power down, a tape doesn't give a shit about it.
Your HDD is unlikely to still be working correctly. Or, the data is likely corrupted by time.
Click to expand...
If thats what the article was about you might have a point.
Its not about long term backups.
 
Nenu said:
Thats not what the article is about.
Its hard to stay on topic with your swerve tactics.
Click to expand...

I disagree, that is CLEARLY a factor in this article. Data security, readily accessible cheap storage. It is all inter related.
 
Grimlaking said:
I disagree, that is CLEARLY a factor in this article. Data security, readily accessible cheap storage. It is all inter related.
Click to expand...
To quote the articles headline
To stay up-to-date in the battle against hackers, some companies are turning to a 1950s technology.
Click to expand...
You can have all the benefits of hard drives by keeping them and just turning them off when not needed.
There is no need to move to tape for regular use.

Tapes are not so reliable when regularly accessed and are a huge amount slower.

Tape as a backup solution, no question.
But thats not the focus of the article.
 
I wish they made a home tape drive for under 200 i would buy it for my computer for sure for sure.
 
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