The retention tipping point

By Simon Taylor

Where has the individual human perspective gone on the way information is classified, segregated and stored for compliant retention, privacy and risk management? How then do we capture this understanding to ease the burden of information retention?

In today's world of multiple different types of communication, when faced with an inherent corporate information risk, how easy is it for organisation to make the decision to just keep everything. Actually the answer is very easy and this approach isn't as uncommon as you might think. The "default" position of keeping it all because "it's the right thing to do" has strong parallels with other human challenges including waste management. Think about how you manage your trash at home. Of course most still put everything in one trash bin vs. separation for recycling vs. shredding for privacy. We now know the downstream implications of this strategy however the question remains as to how long did it take us to wake up to the consequences of keeping everything in one place? In short the answer is very many years, but what made us change? It was only at the precipice, when countries were faced with exponential growth in waste leading to uncontrolled cost, environmental damage and a multitude of potential health related civil law suits did the tipping point occur and mass recycling become the acceptable normality.

In short we now need to improve the way unstructured information is retained or we could face similar if not more wide ranging implications to the global information world. Modern thinking has us complying with retention policies by keeping everything. This simply won't do. Retention needs to be applied though the classification of information at a granular level regardless of whether its nature is ascertained automatically or directed by an end user. How else can you sort out what you need to retain and what you don't and then segregate the information "waste". The more classification rules we can model as policies for the alignment of retention the more the balance can shift from the end user to automation but this shouldn't be prescriptive. Organizations also need to gradually evolve to the granular application of retention rather than the often catastrophic big bang approach that incurs risk.

So what can you use to do this?

The answer to the information retention tipping point is finally here. The CommVault Simpana9 Information Governance Framework offers a unique answer by delivering a step-by-step approach that enables organisations to move steadily and measurably to unified information management. The CommVault Simpana software includes a range of purpose-built information governance capabilities from a single technology platform. All data acquired by Simpana software is deduplicated and content indexed using embedded technology that supports over 400 record types in over 77 languages supported. Embedded processes classify and redirect information both automatically and manually (via end-users) to promote the collection of records to specific retention policies with specific and seamless user or group access.

Finally a real step-wise solution to better information governance is here without invasive technology, but instead enabled through capabilities that focus on accessing and retaining important information records.

About

Simon leads CommVault's Information Management business focusing on solutions that cover information governance, ILM, eDiscovery and compliance. He has influenced the development of a range of solutions in data retention, archiving and enterprise search over the last 10 years, working for or with some of the leading companies in this field.