Accounting practices, brokerage firms, and finance teams usually find themselves working with both the need for confidentiality (client money data) and the need to meet a filing or reporting deadline that will not move. Both are taken care of by our own engineering team in Cambridge, who handle the ledger and practice database data so that when it comes back to you, it will open in the software, rather than coming back in the form of a folder of extracted files.
Practice systems, accounting databases, and finance servers: the data is recovered in-house under NDA and compared against the software that needs to read this data, and all data remains within the UK.
After a failure, there's typically an immediate reaction to “get the system up and running.” However, in regulated financial work, the urgency to get the system up and running could result in your inability to prove what occurred, which may be more important than the time lost due to downtime.
If the records will need to be retained, or if there's a possibility that the incident will need to be reported, you should create an image of the system before repairing, reinstalling or rebuilding. This allows for preservation of the position while still allowing the restore operation to run based upon a validated copy, instead of running over the evidence.
This process takes a few hours, and skipping it cannot be undone.
If personal data may have been affected. Under UK GDPR, you must notify the Information Commissioner's Office (“ICO”) of a breach within 72 hours of discovering it. It is worth noting that this timescale has nothing to do with whether or not you manage to recover your data, nor whether or not you complete the restore process. Therefore, irrespective of how long it takes for you to complete your restore, this clock will start ticking immediately.
In terms of financial data, we provide treatment consistent with our evidentiary process: documented receipt; write-blocked acquisition when applicable; hash verification; and a record of who had custody of the media at all times. We do this routinely because in many cases someone asks about this later.
Everything is done internally; no parts of the process are outsourced. No customer data leaves the UK. One single named engineer works on the problem from start to finish. We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and we will sign your confidentiality agreement before the media arrives.
The cost for array work is at least £500 +VAT. You should shut down power cleanly, make no changes, document the disk order, then contact us. Most of the issues we experience in these cases were caused by an attempt to bring the volume back up during the first hour.
In the case of personal data being impacted, you are legally required (UK GDPR) to report this breach within 72 hours of becoming aware. This is a statutory requirement separate to recovery, and is worth acting upon immediately rather than later.
Seasonal trend. We can generally predict how to restore data when working with Sage files due to their structured nature, once the underlying volume is readable. The first time we speak, please provide us with your deadline.
Yes. Part of our services includes providing a detailed report outlining what failed, what was damaged and what was successfully recovered. The report will include documentation related to custody of the data.
All work will be performed internally and in house. No subcontractors or third-party vendors will be used; data will never leave the United Kingdom and we are ICO registered. In addition, prior to any equipment arriving on site, your own non-disclosure agreement (NDA) will be executed between you and us.
Costs start at £500 +VAT for array and server restoration, and £300 +VAT for the restoration of a single drive. All costs will be fixed in writing after completion of your complimentary diagnostic.