Abstract
M.Tech.
Information is a company’s greatest asset that is continually under threat from
human error, technological failure, natural disasters and other external factors.
These threats need to be identified and quantified and their relevant protection
techniques need to be deployed. This research will allow businesses to
ascertain which of these data protection strategies to embrace and deploy,
thereby highlighting the balance between cost and value for their business
needs.
Every commercial enterprise should understand the business value of their data
and realise that protecting this data is of utmost importance. However, company
data often resides on different mediums, in different locations and implementing
a data protection strategy is not always cost effective in terms of the cost of
storage mediums and protection methods. The challenges that businesses face
is trying to distinguish between mission-critical data from other business data,
excluding any non-business or invaluable data that resides on their systems.
Thus a cost-effective data protection strategy can be implemented according to
the different values of business data.
This research provides a model to enable an organisation to:
· Utilise the model as a framework or guideline in determining a strategy
for protection, storage, retrieval and preservation of business critical
data.
· Define the data protection strategy to meet the organisation’s business
requirements.
· Define a cost effective data protection solution that encompasses
protection, storage, retrieval and preservation of business critical data.
· Make strategic decisions based on an array of best practices to ensure
mission-critical data is protected accordingly.
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· Draw a conclusion between the costs of implementing these solutions
against the real business value of the data that it protects.