New legal and regulatory requirements have put pressure on businesses to pay attention to their records management practices. With guidelines coming from the SEC requiring that “…electronic media must: preserve the records exclusively in a non-rewriteable, non-erasable format…” and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act which outlines stiffer penalties, including fines and even jail time for improper records retention and management, public and private entities are being forced to re-examine the methods in which their electronic files are handled and stored.

AMR Research predicts that Fortune 1000 companies will spend $2.5 billion on IT infrastructure to meet current SEC guidelines.

"Trustworthy Storage and Management of Electronic Records", a white paper published by Cohasset Associates, identified four areas in which an electronic file’s integrity can be challenged in an audit or investigation.

1. A storage medium or subsystem that is inherently or potentially alterable
2. The risk of records being lost or altered when the storage solution or media required frequent migrations resulting from technology degradation or obsolescence over the course of a long retention period
3. Little or no documented evidence (audit trail or chain of custody) of the events that have occurred over the record’s lifecycle
4. Insufficient protection of the record from alteration or deletion in the processes, procedures, systems, storage solutions or storage medium utilized

In summary, companies need to implement a reliable storage solution to ensure their overall business integrity and reputation. Current methodologies employed to try and satisfy this requirement, such as magnetic tape and hard disk drives, are largely unsuccessful due to lower overall shelf life and inability to offer a viable write once, read many (WORM) recording option.

DISC storage libraries are built upon one of the most reliable storage technologies ever created, and are optimized for the express task of long term storage and archiving. Offering a product line that enables scalability up to four times within an existing chassis gives customers the advantage of efficiently growing into their storage as they require. DISC systems also have the advantage over hard disk and tape systems by offering Write Once Read Many (WORM) storage in instances where electronic record, or file, integrity must be maintained for audit and security purposes.