Storing Cell Phone Data in the Cloud Can Be Risky

It will come as no surprise to IT enthusiasts that storing their data in "the cloud" does present some risks. A problem associated with the Sidekick smartphone was highlighted in a recent article (see: T-Mobile: Missing Sidekick data "almost certainly has been lost" ). Below is an excerpt from it:

The Sidekick was one of the first phones to keep all your e-mail, contacts, events, and photos in an online "cloud"; cool, right? But in the wake of a critical server outage more than a week ago, frustrated Sidekick users are learning the hard way that when things go wrong, cloud computing isn't all it's cracked up to be. In what's shaping up to be one of the worst tech train wrecks of 2009, T-Mobile and Microsoft (owner of Sidekick developer Danger) admitted Saturday that any contact, events, or to-do lists that haven't already been restored following a massive server meltdown earlier this month are probably gone forever....Meanwhile, it's still not clear what caused the server outage—which left Sidekick users without any data access at all for days on end—in the first place (although there are some theories floating around)....T-Mobile has already told Sidekick users that it will give them a month's worth of data for free in the wake of the outage, and the carrier also posted a F.A.Q. on how to restore your Sidekick contacts from vCard files, Outlook, or a SIM card. But many Sidekick users looked to be out of luck Monday, with who-knows-how-many contacts, calendar events, to-dos, and e-mails vanishing into the ether. Indeed, more than a few angry users on T-Mobile's message boards were already grumbling about lawsuits. In the end, though, nothing (short of a miracle on T-Mobile and/or Microsoft's part) will bring the lost data back, and that brings us to the moral of the story: Backup your data, especially the stuff that's floating up in a cloud somewhere.... That's especially important when it comes to free, in-the-cloud e-mail account like Gmail and Yahoo! Mail—both have methods for quickly exporting all your contacts and events to a local file....

Here is an update on this story in the form of an excerpt of a letter posted on the T-Mobile web site from Ros Ho of Microsoft (see: Microsoft Confirms Data Recovery for Sidekick Users ):

On behalf of Microsoft, I want to apologize for the recent problems with the Sidekick service and give you an update on the steps we have taken to resolve these problems. We are pleased to report that we have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those  Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage.  We plan to begin restoring users’ personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible.

So, from all of this we learn that the servers in the cloud are fallible. A good rule-of-thumb is to always backup your data no matter where it is stored. At first blush, such a strategy may seem impractical when radiology or pathology PACS image files are stored in the cloud because the reason for utilizing cloud storage in the first place is because of insufficient data storage capacity locally. Well, the obvious answer to this question is to contract for both primary and less expensive secondary storage in the cloud (see: Does cloud storage need backup? ). If there is a failure at either point, file restoration is possible. I have no advice if there is failure at both points.

My thanks to Robert Michelle of the Dark Report and Dark Daily for suggesting this topic to me.