I think just about every one of my customers is using somewhat different
criteria to decide, depending on

   - what particular circumstance they are concerned about,
   - what laws apply to their industry, if any
   - who is involved in the discussion (tecchies or lawyers or compliance
   officers or people who don't understand the technology)
   - whether they are talking about provisions that will simply keep
   their names off CNN if a tape goes missing on the way to Iron Mountain, or
   - they want to cover absolutely any possible hypothetical data
   exposure, no matter how unlikely ( e.g. sombody makes an Ocean's 11
   style raid on the secure tape room to grab the backup tapes even though it
   would be much easier to break in somewhere else and steal the live data off
   someone's unsecured laptop)

Are you talking about "discoverable" meaning the legal term "discovery", or
as in "snoopable", meaning somebody gets access to your media because it
falls off a truck or they walk out the door with it?

The latter case is handled easily (well, maybe not exactly easily, but at
least straightforward-ly) by turning on encryption on your 3592's, for
in-house as well as peripatetic tapes.

W



On 2/7/08, Richard Sims <rbs AT bu DOT edu> wrote:
>
> Applicable state and federal laws largely determine the disposability
> of media, as previously explored in threads such as
> http://www.mail-archive.com/adsm-l AT vm.marist DOT edu/msg74957.html
>
> If media is kept in a secured facility, then the issue is moot, as no
> unauthorized persons will gain access to the media.  Under such
> circumstances there is no issue as to rewriting or data
> recoverability at any point.
>
>    Richard Sims
>