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 a world leader in information management services, assisting more than 140,000 organizations in 39 countries on five continents with storing, protecting and managing their information. Publicly traded under NYSE symbol IRM, Iron Mountain is an S&P 500 company and a member of the Fortune 1000 (currently ranked: 643).

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

The company regularly has a booth at ICANN Meetings.

Business Scope and History

Organizations in every major industry and of all sizes—including more than 97% of the Fortune 1000—rely on Iron Mountain as their information management partner. Iron Mountain safely stores some of the world’s most valuable historical artifacts, cultural treasures, business documents and medical records. To properly protect and render this information, Iron Mountain employs almost 20,000 professionals and boasts an unrivaled infrastructure that includes more than 1,000 facilities, 10 data centers and 3,500 vehicles. Iron Mountain recently celebrated its 60th birthday.

For a look “inside the mountain” visit the company scrapbook.[1]

Richard Reese, Iron Mountain’s CEO and chairman, discusses the information management industry in this Q&A. [2]

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, and 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 in 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 Registrar Data Escrow 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.