Nine PBS sues Iron Mountain over blocked access to archival data

Nine PBS lost access to over 50 terabytes of critical archival data spanning 70 years of organizational history when their cloud storage vendor (Open Source Storage) became defunct and Iron Mountain refused to return the data despite Nine PBS' legal ownership and court judgment. This case highlights severe risks in multi-layered vendor relationships where infrastructure ownership claims can supersede data ownership rights, potentially exposing organizations to permanent loss of business-critical assets. IT leaders must reassess data escrow agreements, direct vendor relationships, and contractual protections to prevent similar situations where archived data becomes inaccessible despite being legally owned.