Almost all government-owned establishments in Qatar have reported the presence of a documented archiving/backup policy, according to the Ministry of Transport & Communications (MOTC).
This shows that security, archiving, and backup are emerging as some of the most important elements in ICT planning and implementation with advances in technology and communication.
In its recent “Qatar ICT Landscape – 2016” report, the ministry said some 97% of the government-owned establishments in Qatar have reported the presence of a documented archiving/backup policy, compared to the privately owned business establishments (41%).
The proportion of businesses with an archiving and back-up policy also varies with industry segment.
Banking and financial services (96%), education (69%), and construction (69%) are the top sectors in terms of having an archiving and back-up policy, followed by information and communications (67%), transportation and storage (67%), manufacturing (42%), wholesale and retail trade (41%), and health and social activities (37%).
In addition to the implementation of an archiving and back-up policy, it is also essential that certain basic standard practices are followed to ensure that business establishments have some sort of disaster recovery or business continuity plan.
Overall, nearly 20% of the business establishments in Qatar have a documented or published disaster recovery or business continuity plan in place. Similar to other indicators presented in the section, availability of the documented disaster recovery plan is highest among establishments with 250 or more employees at 57% and lowest with businesses with 1-9 employees (11%).
Overall, 73% of all business establishments report backing up data. External hard disks and flash memory are the most common media used for data backup at 41%, followed by hard disk of the same PC at 36%.
Remote locations and central servers have not yet developed as mediums for data back-up among business establishments in Qatar with only 2% backing up data to the cloud and 17% on a server, the report showed.
The business establishments that back up data can store their data either within the premises or off-site. Among the business establishments backing up their data, about 85% store the back-up within their premises, 15% store their data at a remote location, and 2% use the cloud.
The proportion of business establishments storing their back up data within their premises is highest among the establishments with 1–9 employees (89%).
The usage of off-site data storage facilities increases with the increase in the size of the business establishment, with 8% of businesses with 250 or more employees backing up their data to the cloud.
“In addition to appropriate policies and following defined standards to protect data from any threat, archiving all information to enable recovery in case of loss is one of the key steps that would help build data security.
“With the growth in the amount of data collected by businesses each year comes the challenge of protecting that data from accidental deletions and disasters and complying with regulatory requirements for long-term retention,” the report said.
..
