With the increasing challenges in data storage and the increasing desire of organizations to move data into a cloud storage platform, WORM compliant cloud storage is emerging as a vital resource.
It’s important that companies look beyond just their storage capacity needs. They should research their cloud platform options, but more importantly, the data management and software services available to them. There are many choices and the best solution is one that allows you to easily identify the data for cost effective storage tiering, manages the data to support the business needs and allows for fast, easy search and retrieval of data to meet regulatory requirements.
This is where WORM compliant cloud storage comes in.
With the increasing challenges in data storage and the increasing desire of organizations to move data into a cloud storage platform, it’s important that companies look beyond just their storage capacity needs. They should research their cloud platform options, but more importantly, the data management and software services available to them.
There are many choices and the best solution is one that allows you to easily identify the data for cost effective storage tiering, manages the data to support the business needs and allows for fast, easy search and retrieval of data to meet regulatory requirements.
This is where WORM compliant cloud storage comes in.
How do you achieve WORM compliant storage in the cloud? First, you want to make sure that the data stored in the cloud uses a management layer, or SaaS (Software as a Service) solution that offers the right technology to ensure a company’s data is WORM-compliant to meet the regulations enforced upon them. Second, you want to make sure that the storage platform is agile, which can be achieved with the same management software that has been developed to address compliance requirements.
What does WORM stand for?
WORM stands for write once, read many which is a data storage technology that was developed years ago which allows information to be written a single time, without the ability to erase any of the data, e.g. putting the data on a non-rewritable disc so users cannot accidentally, or intentionally, change the written data originally stored on file.
Today, WORM storage is factored into a cloud services as software developers consider highly regulated data storage requirements when designing their service solutions, to ensure requirements can be met across all types of industry regulatory requirements. Solutions should be designed to transfer your information to the cloud, without anything being altered, and acts as a backup, which is another requirement of WORM compliant storage.
Before SaaS solutions were built to support cloud storage platforms, WORM compliant devices were used for archiving data, especially in regulated industries like Insurance and Government Agencies, Financial Services Corporations and Healthcare Facilities, all owning and holding highly sensitive data, which is why regulations like FINRA, SEC and HIPPA imposed laws around the archiving of electronically stored information. The laws were developed to ensure data is not only archived but archived in the right format to meet some very strict compliance standards that are closely monitored.
WORM compliance refers to an archiving system’s ability to store files in a format that cannot be altered, and the same requirements must be met in today’s growing Cloud storage environment.
There are many SaaS solutions available that provide cloud storage management capabilities, originally created to lower on-premises storage costs by simply moving data to the cloud, which can result in significant cost savings for many reasons. The key here is to ensure you use the right cloud management layer that has the capability to store data, with compliance in mind. There are very intelligent cloud archiving solutions built for managing data storage in the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, where regulated companies can perform secure cloud archiving, backup, data management, and WORM compliant storage in their own Microsoft Azure instance. For example, at LiquidData, we provide a solution that stores the data in Microsoft Azure, where the content stored is immutable and deletion policies can be blocked. AND, the data management software includes features like item-level WORM policies and legal holds. You can even extend WORM retention periods, but never decrease them, which addresses WORM compliance storage requirements in the cloud.
LiquidData Systems offers a fully-managed solution that runs smoothly in Microsoft Azure, seamlessly integrating your on-premises file storage for ‘books and records’ compliance. From a single platform, you can also satisfy WORM retention needs for messages, scanned documents, sensitive data, and various other workloads from a single platform. With the emphasis on using cloud-based WORM compliant storage, you’ll see how our solution was designed to make all your data easy to access, including all your unstructured data including video, audio and PST files. Learn more about our cloud and WORM storage solutions.
