DataCop detects problems with, shared and existing data.

Protection of a user's environment from potential contamination of year 2000 non-compliant data is a troublesome task. It is the limitless formats of date data and their varying means of creation and exchange that pose a risk to the business, it's network, and it's data exchange partners. With the investment most IT, IS, network administrators, and year 2000 project managers have made in the last several years, clean management has become more than a concern - it is a demand.

Many year 2000 efforts have eradicated risks across the hardware and operating systems of PCs and their networks. Many of these same efforts have eliminated the concern about compliance of shrink-wrapped software programs. However, these same efforts have not yet introduced a mechanism for maintaining the data, date formats, formulae and macros users may employ daily from their desktops. This leaves the substantial investment made early on as part of the year 2000 project at an ongoing level of risk. And this is where the demand for clean management of data arises.

What is it you do with regard to user data and its daily management and protection?

• Have you been - or are you currently - in charge of year 2000 work and conversion and protection of date data?
• Are you in control of the date data your business relies on, creates, or exchanges daily?
• What happens if the date data that is crucial to your business gets corrupted or contaminated by a virus?
• Do you and your team undergo hours of frustration to correct data and make it operational?

If you answer yes to any of these questions, you are aware that data protection is a business problem. You probably realize your date data can be - and probably has been - contaminated. Now that you've undergone year 2000 work, your protection of your data is highly important. But how do you protect data from the potential risks introduced via the Internet, e-mail, file transfers, and the high degree of flexibility all software programs make available to user's desktops? Finding the means of controlling individual desktops and protecting the data on your network is a never-ending task.

The analysis of user's desktops has proven that user data and the data sharing component of daily transactions are the most difficult areas to control and protect. Most network administrators don't need analysis to know this is true; they experience the difficulties on a daily basis. However, most users are oblivious to the power they wield daily on their PCs or the risks they introduce. The data created at their desktops and the transfer of data to their colleagues via e-mail and the Internet, or the data downloaded or integrated from various web sites and commercial products via CD-ROM, network, or disk, all carry a level of risk along with the freedom of data capture and transfer. Most users enjoy this tremendous level of freedom daily with little thought of the potential contamination and corruption deployed by their simple actions. We all agree that this freedom is one of the biggest benefits of the latest technologies.

While we have been leading the campaign on data monitoring since the early days of year 2000 awareness, little progress has been put forth in daily business practices to address the potential risks. In many instances the business practices are unmonitored because of the hundreds of tasks you already have to perform just to keep the environment operational and current. Who knows... you may actually be pulling your hair out to find an easily deployed solution! You may have even created proprietary solutions to facilitate data protection in the hope of making your life easier. But do proprietary solutions or some of the Fortune 500 solutions like an SAP system actually limit the power of data sharing and standard data control?

This white paper poses the questions of data management and how best to intercept data as it's created or shared. It discusses how you can assure data integrity and retain the investment from year 2000 compliance efforts. It gives you the information you need to consider the risk of data corruption and how it relates to your business. It discusses how to interpret whether or not this is or should be your concern and how to implement a solution for assuring the protection of your data. This white paper is written for the business user, the IT/IS manager, the network administrator, and the year 2000 project manager since you hold the responsibility of desktop data processing for your business. We hope it will help you consider the best solution for retaining all the hard remediation work you've done so far and think about being at the forefront of the business revolution that demands clean management.

Average Download Times
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* 56K Modem - 1 hour, 3 minutes, 17 seconds.
* ISDN - 26 minutes, 21 seconds.
* T1 - 2 minutes, 11 seconds.