With the DCA calendar expanding, Executive Director, Simon Campbell-Whyte summarises an already very exciting and productive year…

The project is designed to identify the training and research needs of the industry, this being formulated through a process of researching the existing landscape coupled with a gap and SWOT analysis. This also includes identifying the regional position and identifying and including growth areas beyond the exiting data centre “hotspots” of London, Amsterdam and Frankfurt. This will then provide the foundation for the Joint Action Plan (JAP) for the industry with a plan for sustainability beyond the 18 months of EU funding. DCA members will be essential in assisting the project’s researchers and providing their views, needs and wants for the future.

Talking of firsts, the long awaited initial release of DCA Certifications was launched at Data Centre World on 27th/28th February. Someone very famous once said; this is not the end, It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning – that’s certainly how I see version 1. It will change, evolve and improve via the DCA platform and its member’s, but at least at last, the industry can be in control of its own recognition of excellence. We’re now working with the first three Approved Auditors, PTS Consulting, CS Technology and Future Tech on delivering the first DCA certified data centres. In addition we are calling for organisations to become DCA Approved Auditing firms and I am pleased to report many enquiries have been received. For more information on DCA Certifications visit www.data-central.org

I’m also pleased to report that membership has been growing month on month. During February and to date in March new members include Sovereign Data Centres, Keysource, Opterna, Carmarthenshire County Council, Bird & Bird LLP, Bladeroom, 2bm, Emerson Network Power and Optimum Data Centres - all are welcome new DCA members - my thanks for their support of the DCA.

This year’s Data Centre Transformation Conference, although still very much a University of Leeds/ Data Centre Solutions event, will be held on the 9th July at AQL’s 300 seat conference facility. This unique location is a converted church called Salem, with a new data centre viewable by the audience through a central glass floor – you couldn’t make it up could you! The conference entry is free for DCA members and as usual will feature some great talks, including DCA updates, international industry expert discussions as well as Academic UK government speakers.

If that’s not enough DCS have organised an after conference dinner at the Royal Armouries in Leeds – if anything like last year this is one not to be missed, book your place at www.dtconference.com

 

 

Are you taking full advantage of your DCA membership?
By Louise Fairley, Marketing Manager, DCA

IN THE LAST FEW MONTHS I have seen a steady increase in member participation on Data Central. With opportunities for event sponsorship, blogging, webinar broadcasting, networking and of course article submission for our official journal, interest has been growing.

Data Central continues to evolve and you will notice new features being added over the coming months. The Media Centre has a couple of new features worth checking out, DCA Members in the Press where you can post your press clippings and links to media coverage and DCA in the Press where we will post ours. Don’t forget that these can then be posted out to social media and shared internally with your connections.

All of these activities whether taken independently or as part of overall long term plan are excellent opportunities for promotion, networking and ultimately increasing profile awareness and we have further plans afoot, watch this space... Please do contact me with any thoughts and/or questions surrounding the initiatives we are running for this year.

One of the initiatives I am keen to encourage is reciprocal linking between member websites and the DCA. As a DCA member you have access, through Data Central, to the Media Pack and your membership logo and whether on a ‘partner page’ or from your homepage, can be linked back to the DCA.

Simon touched upon some of our newest members to the DCA and may I also extend a very warm welcome to them. I would urge all new members to issue a press release with reference to joining the DCA, where we will be happy to include a few words from us so please do contact me to discuss. Joint PR is good!

We already have quite a full events calendar for this year to date and all of these are available to view on www.data-central.org. Here’s a summary of the next few months for your diaries:
£ 12 April 2013, London- the DCA supports RAC Magazine’s
Data Centre Cooling Question Time
£ 23 May 2013, London Kensington- Datacentre Solutions Awards
2013
£ 09 July 2013, Leeds Yorkshire- Datacentre Transformation
Conference 2013 DTC’13

We very much look forward to working with you now and in the future for continual development of standards, guidelines and programmes to support the data centre industry.

 

 

Creating a circular IT economy and avoiding the financial time bomb of IT disposals

 

Disposal is the final chapter in the IT asset management story, and yet it
is often the stage that gets the least attention (and budget!).
By Steven Coates, CEO ICT Refurbishment Ltd.

HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of unserviceable or decommissioned technology assets sit idle worldwide, posing a significant challenge to IT professionals. Whilst sitting idle they represent a serious business risk. Once packed away in a cupboard they “go off radar” and yet they are vulnerable to attack. The big question is what to do with them: refurbish, sell, donate, or dispose of these IT assets? How do you control the risks of decommissioning to the same standards and rigour as installing and maintaining these assets? The disposal “problem” is as much about managing the “intangible risk” as it is about managing the tangible obsolete inventory. If not carefully managed, retirement of redundant IT could significantly damage a reputation and lead to heavy fines.

The costs could be significant. Under EU Data Protection Act 1998 & 2003 (DPA), the data creator is responsible for remedying a data breach or release of protected data to people or organisations not authorised to receive it. This could mean contacting every person and organisation whose data was held in a computer memory that has not been securely eradicated or accounted for. Insurance analysts Ponemon estimated, in March 2011, that remedying data breaches cost UK organisations an average of £1.9 million in 2010 - an increase of 13% on 2009. The cost of the most expensive incident was £6.2m an increase of £2.3 million compared to 2009. The costs associated with each breach range from detection, escalation, notification and customer churn due to diminished trust.

The Financial Services Authority also issue fines against financial institutions where they determine insufficient care of confidential data has been taken. An example occurred in August 2010 when a large insurance company was fined £2.3 million for losing the details of 46,000 customers. In the UK, the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) has been empowered to levy a fine of up to half a million pounds for each data breach. This was increased in April 2010
from a fine of just £5,000. The rules are set to change again, the European DPA is currently being amended in Brussels and the updated directive will come into force in April 2014.

Under the new rules, the ICO will be empowered to fine a maximum of 2% of global turnover. In addition, organisations with more than 500 data subjects will have a mandatory obligation to report all data breaches - do you know what constitutes a data breach?
According to the ICO enforcement website 23 penalties were issued in 2012 and already one penalty has been issued in 2013. The ICO have teeth and they are not afraid to bite. An early victim of these increased powers was highlighted last year when, acting in good faith and with what it believed was a fully accredited disposal contractor, an NHS Trust was fined £325,000 by the ICO following a serious breach of the Data Protection Act when patient records were sold on eBay. More worryingly, if the data is subsequently sold this becomes a criminal offence under section 55 of the Data Protection Act which could have far more serious implications for the data controller.

The DPA stipulates that the data creator is responsible for remedying a data breach or release of protected data to people or organisations not authorised to receive it. For some businesses, this could mean contacting every person and organisation whose data was held in a computer memory that has not been securely eradicated or accounted for.

To manage this risk and protect themselves organisations must pay serious attention to end of life IT. Large sums of money are often spent to protect equipment from attack whilst it is in service but as soon as the kit becomes “end of life” in many cases it “goes of radar” and very little resources are provided to manage this risk appropriately. Organisations must be able to track every asset to the point where all data has been eradicated. It is no longer sufficient to say “we lease everything and so it is not our problem” as the DPA clearly states that the data creator cannot pass on their obligations to protect that data. There must be a formal disposal policy in place. There are a lot of unscrupulous people out there who just turn up at a business and falsely claim to have accreditations that they simply do not hold. It is impossible to know what these people do with the hardware – whether it goes to landfill, is just dumped somewhere, or worse it ends up being sold to who-knows? In the BBC Panorama Programme “Track my Trash” investigation they saw confidential documents from the Environment Agency that showed 77% of the UK eWaste was illegally exported to West Africa, which suggests where most of this equipment is ending up.

A formal disposal policy provides a forum to explicitly define disposal activities, geographic reaches, roles and responsibilities, and execution and record-keeping requirements. The policy enables an organisation to coordinate complex international laws and industry regulations, accounting rules, and sanitation and disposal options so that Technology can be properly removed from inventory and risks are appropriately managed.
A quick checklist:
1. Is your supplier independently accredited?
2. Do they have a Waste Carriers Licences and a Wast
Management License?
3. Can they provide sample asset reports to demonstrate full
traceability?
4. Do they provide fully accredited Data Erase Certificates?
5. Have the previously been fined for dumping WEEE waste on
landfill sites?

By doing this right organisations will mitigate their risk and uncover the hidden social benefits. A three-year-old piece of computer equipment that is out of warranty is not eWaste. It is an opportunity for a parent to plug their home into the Internet for the first time to allow their children to do their homework or allow an elderly person to stay in touch with the wider world.

Organisations have an obligation to manage end of life equipment sustainably, efficiently and securely. The industry must break out of the current, unsustainable, linear economy of build, buy, and discard. There is another way which is much more circular in its approach however this is only possible when all the risks associated with disposal are fully mitigated. Legislation is forcing a paradigm shift in the way an organisations thinks about end of life technology, riding off the back of this, the true benefits of a Circular IT Economy are beginning to be unlocked.

www.ictrefurb.com