Iron Mountain Incorporated
Encyclopedia
Iron Mountain Inc , founded in 1951, is a company whose headquarters are located in Boston, Massachusetts. It offers records management
, information destruction and data backup services to more than 120,000 customers throughout North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia. Iron Mountain is a component of the S&P 500
Index.
for $9,000. By 1950, the mushroom market had shifted and Knaust was looking for alternative uses for his mine, which he had named "Iron Mountain".
Amid widespread Cold War
fears, Knaust saw a business opportunity in protecting corporate information from nuclear attack
and other disasters. In 1951 the company, now named "Iron Mountain Atomic Storage Corporation", opened its first underground "vaults" and its first sales office in the Empire State Building
, about 125 miles (201.2 km) south. Iron Mountain's first customer was East River Savings Bank, who brought microfilm copies of deposit records and duplicate signature cards in armored cars for storage in the mountain facility. In 1978, the company opened its first above-ground records-storage facility.
During the 1980s, the company expanded beyond New York, opening facilities in New Jersey and throughout New England. In 1988, Iron Mountain extended its reach into 12 more U.S. markets by acquiring Bell & Howell Records Management, Inc. Since 1980, Iron Mountain has acquired more than 200 companies, growing both the company's geographic footprint and its service offerings. Revenue over this period increased nearly 1,000 fold from $3 million in 1981 to $2.7 billion at the end of 2007.
In 2004, Iron Mountain formed Iron Mountain Digital, following the acquisition of Connected Corporation, a maker of online PC backup software. A year later, Iron Mountain Digital added LiveVault, a provider of online backup software for server data.
In 2007 Iron Mountain acquired Stratify Inc., one of the larger e-discovery service providers at the production end of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM).
In June 2008, Bob Brennan, 48, became the company's president and chief executive officer, following Richard Reese, who served 27 years as CEO. Brennan joined Iron Mountain in 2004 as president of North America after the company acquired Connected Corporation, where he was chairman and chief executive officer.
In February 2010, Iron Mountain acquired Mimosa Systems, an archiving software provider.
mine at Boyers, Pennsylvania
near the city of Butler
in the United States
. It began storing records in 1954 and was purchased by Iron Mountain in 1998. It is here that Bill Gates
stores his Corbis
photographic collection in a refrigerated cave 220 feet (67.1 m) underground.
Iron Mountain has additional underground storage facilities in the United States and the rest of the world. Most of the company's over 1,000 storage locations are in above-ground leased warehouse space located near customers.
Fortune magazine has had Iron Mountain on its list of the “World’s Most Admired Companies” every year from 2006 to 2011. In its category, ‘diversified outsourcing services’, it has every year come in second behind Aramark
. The only exception was 2006, when it also ranked below Convergys
. The industry rankings reflect feedback from executives, directors and analysts who rated Iron Mountain and industry peers on nine attributes of reputation, from investment value to quality of management.
In April 2009, Iron Mountain's Digital Record Center for Images was honored as a Product of the Year by the Massachusetts Network Communications Council in the category Cloud Computing, Virtualization and Data Warehousing/Storage.
s. In May 2005,
Time Warner
disclosed that a container of 40 unencrypted backup tapes containing the personal information of 600,000 current and former employees had disappeared while being transported in an Iron Mountain van that made 18 other stops in Manhattan that day. After the loss, Time Warner began encrypting its tapes, and Iron Mountain advised its other clients to do the same.
A year later, tapes containing personal information for about 17,000 Long Island Railroad employees were lost while in transit to the railroad's office, along with tapes belonging to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs being shipped in the same vehicle.
In July 2006, a fire completely destroyed a leased six-story company warehouse in London.
The paper records of 600 customers, including
client files stored by several prominent London law firms, were lost.
Also destroyed were the medical records of up to 240,000 patients of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital
.
The London Fire Brigade
later concluded that the fire was caused by arson
.
One day earlier, a smaller fire believed to have been caused by contractors making roof repairs damaged a company warehouse in Ottawa, Canada.
In August 2007, the company began retrofitting its unmarked vans and trucks with a new security and alarm system using chain of custody
technology to reduce the exposure of customer data to possible loss. Among other security features, the system uses radio frequency authentication and real-time tracking capabilities to help prevent "mysterious disappearances" of tapes, or their actual removal from the vehicle, during transit.
Records management
Records management, or RM, is the practice of maintaining the records of an organization from the time they are created up to their eventual disposal...
, information destruction and data backup services to more than 120,000 customers throughout North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia. Iron Mountain is a component of the S&P 500
S&P 500
The S&P 500 is a free-float capitalization-weighted index published since 1957 of the prices of 500 large-cap common stocks actively traded in the United States. The stocks included in the S&P 500 are those of large publicly held companies that trade on either of the two largest American stock...
Index.
History
The company was started by Herman Knaust, who had made his fortune growing and marketing mushrooms. In 1936, needing more space to grow his product, he purchased a depleted iron ore mine and 100 acre (0.404686 km²) of land in Livingston, New YorkLivingston, New York
Livingston is a town in Columbia County, New York, United States. The population was 3,424 at the 2000 census. The town is named after its founding father....
for $9,000. By 1950, the mushroom market had shifted and Knaust was looking for alternative uses for his mine, which he had named "Iron Mountain".
Amid widespread Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
fears, Knaust saw a business opportunity in protecting corporate information from nuclear attack
Nuclear warfare
Nuclear warfare, or atomic warfare, is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weaponry is detonated on an opponent. Compared to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can be vastly more destructive in range and extent of damage...
and other disasters. In 1951 the company, now named "Iron Mountain Atomic Storage Corporation", opened its first underground "vaults" and its first sales office in the Empire State Building
Empire State Building
The Empire State Building is a 102-story landmark skyscraper and American cultural icon in New York City at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. It has a roof height of 1,250 feet , and with its antenna spire included, it stands a total of 1,454 ft high. Its name is derived...
, about 125 miles (201.2 km) south. Iron Mountain's first customer was East River Savings Bank, who brought microfilm copies of deposit records and duplicate signature cards in armored cars for storage in the mountain facility. In 1978, the company opened its first above-ground records-storage facility.
Expansion
This first iteration of Iron Mountain was bankrupt by the early 1970s and was wholly acquired by Vincent J. Ryan, through his holdings in Schooner Capital Corpation, Boston, MA. At the time it consisted of the original facility in Linlithgo, NY and IMAR (Iron Mountain at Rosendale), a former limestone mine and mushroom cave outside of Kingston, NY. In 1980, it expanded to RI through the purchase of a former Industrial National Bank (the precursor to FleetBoston) cold site and data tape repository in Gloucester, RI. Though it had many Fortune 500 clients at the time, its revenue was in the $6 million dollar range in the early 1980s. Its breakthrough came in the mid 1980s when it convinced Manufacturer's Hanover Bank to move all its paper records out of Manhattan to the above mentioned above-ground facility, a former strip mall in Port Ewen,NY. This was the first time bar codes were used by a records management company to allow real time access to shipped boxes,and therefore, the documents inside. The barcoding of boxes of paper records and the subsequent rolling up of "Mom and Pop" facilities around the country made expansion easy from there on out. Its "sell or be put out of business" mindset was instrumental to the firm's growth.During the 1980s, the company expanded beyond New York, opening facilities in New Jersey and throughout New England. In 1988, Iron Mountain extended its reach into 12 more U.S. markets by acquiring Bell & Howell Records Management, Inc. Since 1980, Iron Mountain has acquired more than 200 companies, growing both the company's geographic footprint and its service offerings. Revenue over this period increased nearly 1,000 fold from $3 million in 1981 to $2.7 billion at the end of 2007.
In 2004, Iron Mountain formed Iron Mountain Digital, following the acquisition of Connected Corporation, a maker of online PC backup software. A year later, Iron Mountain Digital added LiveVault, a provider of online backup software for server data.
In 2007 Iron Mountain acquired Stratify Inc., one of the larger e-discovery service providers at the production end of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM).
In June 2008, Bob Brennan, 48, became the company's president and chief executive officer, following Richard Reese, who served 27 years as CEO. Brennan joined Iron Mountain in 2004 as president of North America after the company acquired Connected Corporation, where he was chairman and chief executive officer.
In February 2010, Iron Mountain acquired Mimosa Systems, an archiving software provider.
Facilities
The best known Iron Mountain storage facility is a high-security storage facility in a former limestoneLimestone
Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....
mine at Boyers, Pennsylvania
Boyers, Pennsylvania
Boyers is an unincorporated village in Marion Township, Butler County, Pennsylvania, United States. It has a small population with a few businesses located in the center of the town. Slippery Rock Creek flows through the community. The creek's source is a few miles to the east, in the small...
near the city of Butler
Butler, Pennsylvania
The city of Butler is the county seat of Butler County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, situated north of Pittsburgh. The population was 15,121 at the 2000 census.- History :...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. It began storing records in 1954 and was purchased by Iron Mountain in 1998. It is here that Bill Gates
Bill Gates
William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...
stores his Corbis
Corbis
Corbis Corporation is an American company, based in Seattle, Washington, that licenses the rights to photographs, footage and other visual media...
photographic collection in a refrigerated cave 220 feet (67.1 m) underground.
Iron Mountain has additional underground storage facilities in the United States and the rest of the world. Most of the company's over 1,000 storage locations are in above-ground leased warehouse space located near customers.
Recognition
Security magazine named Iron Mountain in “Security 500” of 2008, an annual ranking of the United States' 500 most secure companies. Iron Mountain was its industry’s sole representative in the category of business services. Published in the magazine’s November issue, the Security 500 ranks companies using several metrics such as the percentage of a company’s revenue spent on security. The survey tracks 16 vertical markets to serve as a benchmarking tool for companies.Fortune magazine has had Iron Mountain on its list of the “World’s Most Admired Companies” every year from 2006 to 2011. In its category, ‘diversified outsourcing services’, it has every year come in second behind Aramark
Aramark
Aramark Corporation, known commonly as Aramark, is an American foodservice, facilities, and clothing provider supplying businesses, educational institutions, sports facilities, federal and state prisons, and health care institutions. It is headquartered at the Aramark Tower in Center City,...
. The only exception was 2006, when it also ranked below Convergys
Convergys
Convergys Corporation is a corporation based in Cincinnati, Ohio that provides solutions in customer management and information management. Customer management solutions include agent assisted, self-service and proactive care solutions tailored to the communications, financial services,...
. The industry rankings reflect feedback from executives, directors and analysts who rated Iron Mountain and industry peers on nine attributes of reputation, from investment value to quality of management.
In April 2009, Iron Mountain's Digital Record Center for Images was honored as a Product of the Year by the Massachusetts Network Communications Council in the category Cloud Computing, Virtualization and Data Warehousing/Storage.
Losses
The company has received media attention for losing or misplacing customer files and data, particularly tapes containing private information such as home addresses and Social Security numberSocial Security number
In the United States, a Social Security number is a nine-digit number issued to U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and temporary residents under section 205 of the Social Security Act, codified as . The number is issued to an individual by the Social Security Administration, an independent...
s. In May 2005,
Time Warner
Time Warner
Time Warner is one of the world's largest media companies, headquartered in the Time Warner Center in New York City. Formerly two separate companies, Warner Communications, Inc...
disclosed that a container of 40 unencrypted backup tapes containing the personal information of 600,000 current and former employees had disappeared while being transported in an Iron Mountain van that made 18 other stops in Manhattan that day. After the loss, Time Warner began encrypting its tapes, and Iron Mountain advised its other clients to do the same.
A year later, tapes containing personal information for about 17,000 Long Island Railroad employees were lost while in transit to the railroad's office, along with tapes belonging to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs being shipped in the same vehicle.
In July 2006, a fire completely destroyed a leased six-story company warehouse in London.
The paper records of 600 customers, including
client files stored by several prominent London law firms, were lost.
Also destroyed were the medical records of up to 240,000 patients of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital is a public hospital located on Fulham Road, in the Chelsea area of London, England. It is managed by the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, and opened in May 1993.-History:...
.
The London Fire Brigade
London Fire Brigade
The London Fire Brigade is the statutory fire and rescue service for London.Founded in 1865, it is the largest of the fire services in the United Kingdom and the fourth-largest in the world with nearly 7,000 staff, including 5,800 operational firefighters based in 112 fire...
later concluded that the fire was caused by arson
Arson
Arson is the crime of intentionally or maliciously setting fire to structures or wildland areas. It may be distinguished from other causes such as spontaneous combustion and natural wildfires...
.
One day earlier, a smaller fire believed to have been caused by contractors making roof repairs damaged a company warehouse in Ottawa, Canada.
In August 2007, the company began retrofitting its unmarked vans and trucks with a new security and alarm system using chain of custody
Chain of custody
Chain of custody refers to the chronological documentation or paper trail, showing the seizure, custody, control, transfer, analysis, and disposition of evidence, physical or electronic...
technology to reduce the exposure of customer data to possible loss. Among other security features, the system uses radio frequency authentication and real-time tracking capabilities to help prevent "mysterious disappearances" of tapes, or their actual removal from the vehicle, during transit.
Further reading
- Network World, “Iron Mountain Talks Off-Site Storage Including in Caves,” 07/24/08)
- Boston Globe, “Ascent to the top of Iron Mountain”, 06/29/08
- Mass High Tech, “Iron Mountain Digital Doubles its R&D Plant,” 05/30/08
- CSO Magazine, “The Paper Chain,” 02/27/08