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Air Force Has Lost 100,000 Inspector General Records (thehill.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the Backups?-What-backups? dept.

schwit1 shares an article from The Hill: The Air Force announced on Friday that it has lost thousands of records belonging to the service's inspector general due to a database crash. "We estimate we've lost information for 100,000 cases dating back to 2004," Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek told The Hill in an email. "The database crashed and there is no data..." The database, called the Automated Case Tracking System (ACTS), holds all records related to IG complaints, investigations, appeals and Freedom of Information Act requests.... "We also use ACTS to track congressional/constituent inquiries."
The Air Force said they were "aggressively" trying to recover the data, adding that they had no evidence of malicious intent.

3 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Simple: Restore from your backup by macs4all · · Score: 5, Informative

    You... do... have a backup, ... right?

    E

    Exactly what I came here to say.

    At this point, people employed by a Government Agency claiming "Lost Data" that cannot be restored from a Backup should be CRIMINALLY culpable for Obstruction of Justice and Breach of the Public Trust. Period.

    It's 2016, FFS, there is ABSOLUTELY no excuse for not having Backups. Especially not with the Goddamn AIR FORCE'S Budget!!!

  2. Re:Simple: Restore from your backup by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    You did read (the very short ) article right?

    "The Air Force said it was notified on June 6 by a contractor that administers the database of records that the data within was "corrupted," according to a statement."

    Since the military thinks all their data and networks are safe in the hands of contractors, they'll probably just fire one contractor, put the blame all on them and hire another contractor.

    I really don't understand all the military confidence in contractors. IMO they use contractors far too often. They've also eliminated military personnel positions regarding military network administration and replaced with contractors.

  3. Re:No need for RAID, Distributed DBs or Backups by hawguy · · Score: 4, Informative

    No need for that fancy stuff since it wasn't mission critical data
    Must have been designed by Carnegie Mellon grads

    RAID and distributed DB's are for HA, they are not a substitute for backups. Neither RAID nor a distributed DB will protect against corruption or accidental data loss - if someone deletes the wrong records, they'll be gone from both the primary and secondary database.

    Any many people still think RAID-5 gives adequate protection against drive loss, which is no longer the case with modern large hard drives.