Value your business. Value your data.

By Stuart Beattie | August 1, 2012 | Leave a Comment

How do you manage your data? Research shows that businesses produce 2.2 zettabytes of information each year. To put this into context, if this data was available as one page documents then you could fill the Empire State Building 1,287 times. Coping with such a huge amount of data doesn’t just call security processes into questions but also requires organisations to put the correct procedures in place so that data can be tiered for importance and access can be regulated.

Managing data effectively is a challenge every business has to face but getting it right can pay dividends for your business so here are a few steps organisations can take towards effective data management.

Consider multiple platforms: Information is no longer within the four walls of a company. Cloud-based solutions are being used – whether officially or otherwise. This means data protection is not solely concerned with device protection but the data itself needs to be secure – encryption technology is key.

Organisations must prioritise their data: Which data would you feel comfortable giving to your competitor? Is your data suitable for the public domain? These are worthwhile considerations. The consequences of lost data may be disastrous for your organisation, so make sure you can identify and protect what matters.

Deduplication and archiving: This allows organisations to save vital storage space, to speed up network backups and to efficiently target protection on the data that matters. Frequently review the data held on your servers to understand its relevancy and conduct cleanups to remove any duplicated data. Some appliances now do this process automatically.

Value your business: Now that information forms 35% of an organisation’s value it is important that every organisation has a data policy which can be supported across physical, virtual and cloud environments. These are commonly known as data retention policies and are important for managing data across an organisation. Does your organisation have a policy in place?

Technology is constantly evolving: As the amount of data we are storing increases each day, it is critical to make sure that your data centre is prepared for the future. This means ensuring expandable storage space and up-to-date security. Be prepared by having data plan in place ahead of time.

Organisations can no longer rely on data to run their businesses without considering its importance, security and how it should be accessed safely. We believe successful information management is critical for all as it is, now more than ever, a crucial part of running a business. We all need to put the “I” back in “IT”.

Statistics taken from Symantec’s ‘State of Information’ Report.

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