Cities are stewards of information that serve the public good. They keep records about city business and comply with open records and FOIA laws. As most information today is electronically created and stored, that information also needs backing up in case of an incident such as a server failure, natural disaster, and (yes) ransomware.
That’s why a records management strategy that backs up important documents and data is so critical. States have passed rigorous document retention schedules with the expectation that cities will keep and produce records upon request. The excuse of “We didn’t back up our records” is not a good one—leading to financial and legal liabilities along with a potential public relations disaster.
If you’re worried about how your city records are backed up, then ask yourself the following questions:
Sometimes, cities think they are backing up records when they aren’t. For example, the following common scenarios are not proper data backup solutions:
A proper data backup and disaster recovery solution contains an onsite component for quick recovery, offsite component for disaster recovery, periodic testing to know you can recover, and real-time monitoring and maintenance overseen by IT professionals.
This may sound obvious, but it’s not. Old habits die hard, and people like to take the quickest path to a solution. That quickest path may not involve following processes related to using a document management system.
You cannot back up what isn’t stored in the document management system. If employees are storing documents on their own computers or devices without placing them in the document management system, then recovering your records may be much harder when you cannot find files that were never stored there. Enforcing policies is a must.
You want to make sure that data backups are as safe and tamper-proof as possible. If too many people have access to backed up files, then confusion, errors, and mistakes can occur. Ransomware may even access your data backups if someone is compromised. The backed-up data should only be accessible to administrative or service accounts and used only in case of emergency—such as after an incident that destroys equipment or eliminates access to data.
As part of automating record retention schedule tasks within your document management system, automated data backup tasks ensure that no human interaction is necessary from non-technical users. As records are uploaded into the document management system, they can be automatically backed up and accessible in the event of an incident such as a server failure. Automatically indexing these files also helps you manage them according to retention schedules.
We see cities risk not backing up records because of storage situations. For example:
Cities need unlimited offsite data backup storage to make sure they do not hit arbitrary storage limitations or price caps.
Too many cities believe they are backing up data only to realize the stunning truth after an incident—that the backups were corrupted or failing for months or even years. Periodic testing ensures that you can actually restore city records. You don’t want to find out too late that your data backups weren’t backing up all critical data, that you don’t know how to actually restore your data, or that the time to recovery of critical data takes weeks or months.
A strong data backup strategy helps with business continuity and disaster recovery related to city records. City clerks need to feel peace of mind that data is automatically stored and backed up. And city employees need to follow processes related to a city’s records management software so that any records they upload or edit (with authorization) are available and recoverable.
Need help making sure your city records are safe? Reach out to us today.