By Johna Till Johnson, Nemertes Research Inc.

May 6, 2005

Time Warner Inc.’s (NYSE: TWX) recent announcement that it lost sensitive data (including names and social security numbers) for 600,000 of its employees highlights the need for enterprises to create effective information stewardship policies. Time Warner’s data was on backup tapes maintained by storage facility provider Iron Mountain Inc. (NYSE: IRM), and was apparently lost in transit to the storage facility. Other companies that have recently suffered high-profile data losses include Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), which in February lost backup tapes containing credit-card records for more than a million government employees, and ChoicePoint Inc. (NYSE: CPS), which the same month was attacked by identity thieves who gained access to sensitive customer data.

To protect against such losses, Nemertes recommends that companies create and adhere to effective information-stewardship policies, which govern how data is accessed, changed, copied, authenticated and backed up. Ongoing research suggests that virtually no enterprises have addressed information stewardship in a coherent fashion, because of the technical, organizational and process challenges it poses.

The complete Impact Analysis is available to Nemertes clients. For more information, please contact Christine Zimmerman at christine@nemertes.com