The world is a volatile place today, from the threats countries face, to health-related outbreaks, to natural disasters around the globe. Being a specialist in the data governance space for 13 years has taught me a lot about securing data and protecting it. Many executives at top 50 companies ask for advice or a simple evaluation of their enterprise data practices.
While different organizations have different challenges, one common issue is that their high-value data is always exposed in one way or another. Whether that data is stored in unmanaged file shares or SharePoint farms, or it’s protected ineffectively with a typical tool that assigns a storage lifecycle policy to it, the high-value data was not truly protected.
Breaches and security incidents where data has somehow been compromised cause immense financial and reputational damage (which is never truly overcome), due to company IP being lost forever because of the data’s location. A laptop is stolen, a storage device is corrupted, proper data protection standards are not being adhered to – these incidents have cost billions of dollars to the global economy.
How will a company continue to protect the most valuable asset it owns, its data?
A Time Without Humans
Data is now sitting in an unmanned data center or facility, with time ticking away. Regulation, compliance, and governance of this data does not take a break, nor are laws impacted by such devastating events. An enterprise must be ready to handle disaster events with applications that will manage their data for them without people present. True, catastrophic events rarely ever remain permanent, but when they do occur, it tends to be the only time CIOs think about these scenarios.
I always advise organizations to be ready. It is not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when. It may not be today, or next year, but eventually, something devastating does happen, and every organization should be prepared.
E-Governance in a Locked-down World
Events like the ones the world faces today can devastate the normal business. However, one thing is certain: protect what you have today and continue daily operations remotely whenever possible. You don’t have to cease operations if you are truly prepared for such events.
The main issue I see when evaluating data governance processes is that most organizations make decisions based on a reactive impulse after an event: the event has already happened, and they want to ensure it will not happen again. Data governance needs to be a proactive priority, and it needs to be practiced as a standard operation.
Again, I advise organizations to be ready before it happens. The rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus has prompted companies to reevaluate their governance, security, and compliance needs. I expect to see a spike or uptick in sales of compliance, intelligence, and governance applications whenever an issue such as this happens.
Where Do We Go from Here?
I advise taking a good look at the organizational policies related to data governance and overall data management, handling regulated data, ensuring the lifecycle of data is being managed, and, most importantly, securing high-value data from exposure in a locked-down world. There are many choices to accomplish this goal. However, sometimes it can take three, four, or five applications to address all the pillars of data governance management.
Only one can manage data from end to end without any human interaction outside of the initial configuration: the Aparavi Platform. Aparavi collects, indexes, analyzes for threats, and, through smart policies, moves data to the proper storage. That storage may be one or more cloud targets, or, for high-value data, on-premises. Aparavi then deletes files when the data lifecycle has run its course. Be ready to protect the most valuable asset of the organization, and endure catastrophic events without fear of data loss, so your company remains operational.
For more information, schedule a consultation with one of Aparavi’s experts.