Iron Mountain

Type:	Public
Industry:	Information Management
Founded:	1951
Founder(s):	Herman Knaust
Headquarters:	745 Atlantic Ave. Boston, MA 02111
Website:	ironmountain.com
Facebook:	Iron Mountain
LinkedIn:	Iron Mountain
Twitter:	@IronMountain
Key People
John Boruvka, Vice President of Sales Mary English, Vice President of Operations Frank Bruno, Director of IPM

Iron Mountain is an industry leader in the protection and storage of information, working with both physical and electronic files. 97% of Fortune 1000 companies use Iron Mountain as their information manager.

Iron Mountain was selected by ICANN to function as its Registrar Data Escrow (RDE) agent in November 2007.

The company regularly has a booth at ICANN Meetings.

Business Scope and History

The company was started in 1951 when Herman Knaust decided to market the old mine he had purchased to grow mushrooms as a storage facility for important corporate documents.

Iron Mountain now has more than 45 million sq. ft. of storage space in more than 1,000 facilities in 37 countries.

They have been growing and diversifying their business since going public in 1996, and have acquired more than 100 companies throughout their company's history. In 2001, they invested $25 million in their digital archiving business. A year later they acquired Connected Corp. for $117 million and began pushing into the online data backup market. Much of Iron Mountain's growth has been overseen by former CEO Richard Reese, who ran the company from 1981 until 2008; he was succeeded by Robert Brennan. Brennan came to Iron Mountain via its acquisition of Connected Corp.

The Original Mountain

The company takes its name, and started its growth, from the original mine purchased by Herman Knaust in 1951. It is arguably one of the most secure sites in the country, evidenced by the fact that the U.S. government has chosen to keep many confidential files and other important physical items in its own special vaults in the mine. The mine is 3 miles long and 2 miles wide, 220 feet underground. The U.S. government is the largest client of Iron Mountain's original facility. 95% of the customers of the site demand that the company keep their identity and their records absolutely secret. They have never had a security breach. The mine notably houses documents from the U.S. patent office; the U.S. social security office; a Smithsonian Institute records collection; over 700,000 original vinyl audio recordings, such as Frank Sinatra's original single, and Michael Jackson's studio masters; physical evidence from flight 93, involved in the infamous terrorist attacks of September 11th; Bill Gates' company, Corbis, stores its collection of famous, historical photographs, the images are in a huge, moisture sealed vault with controlled temperature and humidity levels, the most famous images are specially sealed and frozen to preserve them.

The mine is so extensive that it houses its own water and sewage systems, and fire department and security teams. The mine is an ideal location given that Pennsylvania is not in any danger of earthquakes.

Iron Mountain and ICANN

ICANN selected Iron Mountain to be the digital escrow agent for its RDE program. This program is designed to secure the Internet's domain name system by protecting important data through Iron Mountain's digital department.

At the time of the agreement in 2008, Iron Mountain immediately made itself available to the more than 900 ICANN-accredited domain name registrars, though any registrar could also choose to use a different third party provider as the escrow agent. ICANN now requires registrars to escrow critical registration data that could then be released to ICANN in case there is a termination of the registrar's accreditation agreement.

Awards & Recognition

• In September, 2011, Iron Mountain was ranked on #47 on Information Week's list of the top 250 most Innovative Business Technology Organizations for 2011. Iron Mountain and Information Week credited their cutting-edge performance enhancing studies and developments related to their fleet of nearly 3,000 cargo vans used to deliver and pick up their clients' documents and materials.