End of Life and End of Support

End of life and end of support for IT systems is generally discussed in terms of the hardware, software, and business processes that have to be either decommissioned, replaced, or taken on as technological orphans and supported with in-house resources.

But what about all the data in those systems and on storage media that was unique to them: those old half- inch open-reel spools of 256 bits per inch magnetic tape; those 8-inch single density floppy disks; ZIP drive cartridges, and more. These and many other data media formats have continued being archived and perhaps forgotten about by organizations for decades.

Consider the situation facing many countries' national archives and libraries. They tend to have at least one copy of everything published, and over the past 50 to 60 years much of their collection, its indexes, and its associated metadata has been moved to computerized storage. As demand for an asset decreases, storage management systems may move it to slower, offline storage: a reel of tape, rather than on a disk drive in the storage cluster. (Even cloud storage providers do this, if the cost benefits calculations tell them to.)

Classified data that is on media that is no longer readable by any available technology may be considered at low risk of compromise. Categorized data that requires a certain level of availability or integrity may not be so lucky.

The organization's long-term information security and retention policies may need to consider what happens to their data - or what needs to happen to it - when and if a hardware, software, or services element supporting that data's use, storage, or movement is suddenly without support.

Hybrid cloud architectures (involving more than one cloud services provider) might be something to consider; so, too, might hybrid data strategies be employed to protect against the sudden loss of a social media system's data.