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Paul Le Messurier, data recovery operations manager at Kroll Ontrack UK said: “As storage drives continue to grow in size and intricacy so does the risk associated with storing data. We predict that SSD and HDD drives will increase in popularity in 2014, but the complexity of how they store data will also compromise people’s ability to erase data or recover it when things go wrong. We predict a subsequent rise in demand for our services next year to support these users. Another trend will be a rise in recoveries for online cloud and on smartphones - particularly in workplaces adopting BYOD and CYOD policies.”

Kroll Ontrack witnessed a demand in erase verifications for SSD in its labs in 2013 as the first commercially broader distributed versions of SSDs reached their end of life. There’s no universal standard for wiping out data on the disks, and the only way to verify the method of erasure for each SSD type is for expert engineers to perform recovery tests individually on each SSD disk platter to ensure data is completely erased. The demand for erase verification will continue in 2014 as SSDs continue to expire and companies become more cautious about data leaks through the re-use of SSDs.

The growing pressures on corporate and cloud data centres to improve storage efficiencies and reduce costs will continue in 2014 and will encourage disk makers to design more complex storage disks to accommodate these challenges – such as the first HDD with helium called Ultrastar He6 from HGST. The pioneering hard drive is the world’s highest capacity HDD, and uses helium to reduce space within the disk platters- thereby boosting data capacity for the disks. Kroll Ontrack predicts the new HDD will gain traction in the market and new challenges to data recovery will also be introduced in 2014 as people will not have the equipment or expertise to deal with data loss problems when they arise.

The boost in online cloud adoption and the use of mobile devices in the workplace will also keep Kroll Ontrack’s engineers busy next year. The amount of data being generated by companies and individuals is growing rapidly and the answer to storage remains the cloud. This will present challenges for data recovery since administrators don’t always know where the cloud is based and how to access user data. Also, most of the data will be encrypted for security reasons and will therefore require expert engineers to recover data if a disaster strikes. The popularity of BYOD and CYOD programmes among businesses will increase the use of virtualised environments to support them and also lead to more data recovery requests. This will be due in part to the complexity of virtualisation and the lack of expertise among administrators to deal with user errors, such as deleting virtual drives by mistake.

“Kroll Ontrack will continue to keep up with storage trends in 2014 to guarantee our engineers can offer the support that customers need to safeguard data - whether it’s stored on a smartphone or the cloud,” said Le Messurier. “Businesses should ensure they have an adequate back up plan in place in 2014 to cope with the inevitable problems that will impact data security. Establishing a relationship with a data recovery expert should also be a priority for administrators that lack the knowledge and expertise to support the challenges of new innovations.”