After this fall’s terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, security has become a nationwide concern. In this increasingly tense age, businesses are taking a closer look at data storage technologies that permit them to scan and convert dozens of printed pages per minute into digital files that can be encrypted automatically and copied onto a compact disc or sent over the Internet to computers hundreds of miles away.
The digital data backup and recovery industry, enabling business people with the right passcode to access literally millions of payroll sheets, cancelled checks, legal filings and other company documents with a simple keyword search, is a relatively new, but fast-growing alternative to storing paper documents in standup file cabinets or to backing up computerized records on on-site digital audio tape.
“It is definitely the wave of the future, and the most cost-effective,” said Scott Barclay, managing partner of Main Advantage Technology Services in Las Vegas, a service provider for the data storage company, eVault, based in Santa Ana, Calif.
“You might pay thousands a month for storage space for paper,” Barclay said. With [digital data storage], you can scan and reduce it to a stack of CDs that you can store in your briefcase. Tape backups are not password-protected, and someone has to take the tapes to a secure area – someone who might be able to access the data on them.”
“A lot of people are starting to run out of filing cabinets,” said David Meteyer, vice president for sales and marketing for Holman’s of Nevada Inc., a seller of digital archival software by LaserFiche, a Torrance, Calif.-based firm whose list of clients includes the Justice Department, U.S. Army, CIA and the Clark County Health District.
“About 7 percent to 8 percent of all paper documents are misfiled,” Meteyer added. “And file cabinet documents are dead documents anyway. If they are scanned into a computer, they become live documents.”
Among the companies currently using digital data storage most often are law, medical and financial firms that are required to maintain accurate and readily-accessible records or, in some cases, face legal action. “Some of our clients are in the securities industry, and are required to have their data stored on CD by the Securities and Exchange Commission,” Meteyer said.
With paper documents, the digital storage process begins with the use of high-speed optical scanners that can transform a printed page into a tagged image format, or “.tif” file. This graphic image of text is put into a database that is cross indexed and can be searched by keyword later by the user. The newer scanners, built by companies such as Ricoh and Fujitsu and costing $2,200 to $10,000 each, can scan from 27 pages to up to 50 pages per minute.
Patrons can either store their documents on a CD or send them to a remote computer operated by the data storage company. Up to 15,000 black and white .tif documents can be stored on a single CD and retrieved when needed using the storage firm’s software. With eVault’s offsite data storage system, documents can be scanned and sent via the Internet to eVault’s computer server center in Sacramento, Calif. Customers can also have their computer files copied each day right from their computers, which then send the files automatically, at a chosen time or day or night, to Sacramento.
The information the client stores on the remote computers in Sacramento is encrypted (coded) using a method developed by the U.S. Department of Defense, and even eVault can’t call it up or decode it, Barclay said. Data stored online is priced by the gigabyte.