Friday, June 26, 2015

Jason Atchley : Data : The Biggest Data Management Challenge for an IT Director

jason atchley

The Biggest Data Management Challenge for an IT Director

shutterstock_111695138With great power comes great responsibility, especially when that power is derived from data. Data is a double-edged sword: On one hand, it allows you to preserve potentially valuable information for future use; keep track of past documents, employee and customer interactions; and protect information about the history, development, and organization of your company. On the other hand, data growth rates today can make its maintenance difficult and risky, especially when your employees adopt an “everything is important” attitude toward saving file versions and hoarding data.
The data hoarding mentality refers to the belief that you should never purge your data on the off chance that you’ll need something in the future. Such a mindset produces a well of data that is rarely assessed for relevance or security, resulting in a confusing morass of data with questionable value and high potential risk. When you can’t tell what’s lurking in your dark data, you open yourself up to a slew of security and compliance threats that have the ability to cripple your company’s productivity. As addressed in our latest webinar, “3 Greatest Challenges for Data Management: IT Director’s Perspective,” a compulsive storing mindset can throw obstacles in your company’s path to success that will cause you to redirect and pivot your storage strategies. A webinar I recently hosted with Mark Lamson, director of IT at Westerly Public Schools, and David Stevens, technical marketing manager at DataGravity, tackled this topic, covering how to:
  • Enhance data complexity and security;
  • Increase visibility and understanding of your data sets; and
  • Rein in your data growth and storage utilization.
With 78 percent of data breaches occurring from within an organization, as reported by the Ponemon Institute, it’s becoming abundantly clear that compliance does not always equal security, and that security doesn’t always equal compliance. However, when you better understand how to store and protect data in a way that benefits your company, you can immediately decrease any threats lurking in your dark data.
To find out more on how to overcome the biggest challenges in data management, watch our webinar, “3 Greatest Challenges for Data Management: IT Director’s Perspective.”

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