Why LTO Technology is an Essential Solution for Protecting Corporate Data

It’s no secret that organizations struggle to protect their data. The threats are legion, ranging from simple disk failures to complex cyberattacks. According to a 2024 study conducted by Harris Poll on behalf of Backblaze, only 42% of companies can recover all their data after experiencing data loss.

Overcoming the challenges of protecting organizational data is a top priority for CIOs. Technology vendors are continually developing new solutions to help them achieve this goal, but none offer 100% protection. As long as data is connected to a network, it can be accidentally deleted, corrupted, or attacked.

However, there is one stronghold that IT can use to provide a last line of defense, and while it’s not a new technology, it’s certainly not obsolete. Linear Tape-Open (LTO), launched nearly 25 years ago, is a well-established magnetic tape data storage technology that has been continually innovated. LTO is a cost-effective, easy-to-use technology that can play a significant role in security, data protection, and archiving applications.

Here are three ways LTO can strengthen any organization’s security and data protection:

  • A last line of defense without an air gap: Ransomware attacks are a major concern for all organizations. CIOs would prefer to prevent such attacks, but when they do breach defenses, the ability to quickly recover data may be the only thing that can save an organization from financial ruin. It has long been a best practice to store at least one copy of data offsite, but many organizations have met this requirement by storing backup data in the cloud, where it is still online and potentially vulnerable to attack. Tape is stored offline, so cyberattackers have no way to access the data.
  • Fast and cost-effective recovery: LTO may take a minute or two longer than other storage media to access data, but when it comes to reading and writing, it is much faster than disk. When an organization needs to recover a large amount of data, LTO’s read-write speed really shines.

    LTO is also cost-effective. A single $100 LTO-9 cartridge can store 18TB of uncompressed data (45TB 2.5:1 compressed). Transferring massive amounts of data from the cloud is painfully slow by comparison, and egress costs can be crushing.

    Plus, it’s easy to use. Modern robotic LTO libraries eliminate the need to physically insert and remove tapes. In fact, the LTO management experience isn’t all that different from disk-based or cloud-based systems.

  • A durable data storage medium: Properly stored, an LTO cartridge can safely store data for three decades. Its durability is three orders of magnitude greater than that of a disk drive and it is much less susceptible to failure or corruption. When it comes time to recover data after a disaster or attack, no one wants to discover that their backups have gone bad. LTO provides a safe and reliable long-term medium for backup storage.

So don’t make the mistake of thinking that LTO technology is too old to play a role in your data protection strategy. Nearly a quarter century of development has transformed LTO into a fundamental defense against data loss.

More information about LTO.