A fire at a London records storage facility belonging to Iron Mountain, the records management and data protection company, may have resulted in the total loss of all documents stored at the facility. Iron Mountain helps clients’ store and manage paper records, electronic images, and healthcare records for business continuity and compliance purposes.

Iron Mountain has issued the following statement about the incident:

“On July 12, 2006, a fire started at the Iron Mountain facility in Prologis Park, Bromley-by-Bow which set off the fire detection system at 11.27pm GMT. This facility primarily stored archival and inactive business records for London area organisations.

At this time we can confirm the following details:

First and foremost, no one was hurt and all the nine employees in the building safely exited the building.

London Fire Brigade responded immediately and has been managing the fire scene.

The cause of the fire is not known at this early stage. A full investigation is underway and Iron Mountain is working in close partnership with the local police and fire authorities, as well as our own insurance and risk advisers to ensure a full investigation into the cause of the incident is completed as quickly as possible.

The building was a modern records centre with fire detection and sprinkler systems.

Without having access to the site and relying on only visual inspection, we anticipate a full loss of records contained within the record centre. Once the site has been returned to our care from the Fire Authorities we will carefully review the facility to see if any records can be reclaimed or restored.

We will take necessary action based on the outcome of the investigation as soon as it is known to us.

Incident management
Iron Mountain has organised a dedicated business continuity team who is working around the clock to manage this situation. We successfully deployed our disaster recovery plan and have established a centralised operation support office. Beyond the facility affected by the fire, all regular services remain uninterrupted for the London area.

Communications
All customers utilising the facility received an initial phone call from Iron Mountain informing them of the incident. All customers utilising the facility have now received an e-mail including a breakdown of their affected records inventory.

All other UK customers have received written communication informing them of the incident, assuring them that their records are unaffected.

We are updating our web sites as new information becomes available.

Security
Iron Mountain already invests heavily and emphasises security as a normal operating principle. Due to the unknown cause of the fire at this time, we are taking extra precautions to supplement our current high level of security:

Increased security staff has been added to all London facilities.

Conducting an out of cycle review of background checks on personnel.

Auditing external agencies and internal security assessments.

Re-issuing of vendor background checks.

Re-implementation of security awareness of all internal employees.

Performing an out-of-cycle inspection of all Iron Mountain vehicles.

Customers can call 08708 50 70 80 for more information.

http://www.ironmountain.co.uk

•Date: 20th July 2006• Region: UK •Type: Article •Topic: BC markets
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