As you examine categorizing your desktop and mobile data for proper data governance, a great place to start is with Reference Data. This includes information like units of measurement, country codes, calendar dates, fixed conversion rates, define a set of values, statuses, or classifications.
Standardized Reference Data is the Key
Although Reference Data often has some structure to it, without direct control over it, organizations face the arduous task of combing through a mountain of team projects that spring up and create, define, and interpret the semantics and values deemed to be “Reference Data.”
Lacking a coordinated and centralized mechanism to standardize it, Reference Data gets worse as information sets from different manufacturers, repositories, and versions are aggregated. This widens the differences in what each resource or team deems the ideal “Reference Data,” making it difficult to incorporate or consolidate across sets without a high degree of manual intervention and interpretation.
As soon as intelligent information governance is put on the organization, reference data can be defined and associated with unique data repositories that separate the source’s reference data, which relies upon it. This removes individual possession requirements and centralizes the responsibility and control to a foundational layer encouraging all appropriate business functions equally.
The Explosion of Mobile Device Data
Mobile workers and their data creation and access are increasing in importance and complexity every year. According to a forecast from International Data Corporation (IDC), Mobile workers will be 60% of the Total US Workforce by 2024. Indeed, they’ve been growing steadily since this report, increasing from 78.5 million in 2020 to an estimated 93.5 million mobile workers in 2024.
Mobile workers continue to transition from slow and cumbersome in-house file-sharing solutions to more nimble cloud-based collaboration applications. Furthermore, the more employees send and receive sensitive information through the public cloud, the larger the security threat.
At precisely the same time, employees will need to retrieve files from various devices and share these documents quickly and easily using dispersed teams, but not at the cost of compliance.
Making your information available over cellular means greater exposure to danger. With more access points, more devices, and much more general information, securing mobile data is a multifaceted challenge. The ever-changing regulatory arena and information sovereignty issues increase the complexity of the challenge.
Data Freedom with the Right Tools
With the right enterprise-grade tools, organizations can enable data freedom while ensuring appropriate data governance. A robust and enterprise-ready content file sync and share solution provides a consistent set of tools for protecting, securing, and regulating your data across data centers, remote and branch offices, private and public clouds, and mobile devices. Such a solution integrates with third-party technologies that focus on specific industries or lines of business needs.
At a minimum, your content platform solution should include the following elements
- Access control and identity management
- Information lifecycle management
- Legal holds
- Data loss prevention
- Data protection
- Data retention
- Encryption
- Mobile device management
Organizations can leverage advanced technology strategies to meet workforce requirements for mobility without undermining the company’s data governance requirements.
In the next installment, we will explore the concepts, principles, and components of the Data Services Platform for Governance.
Until next time. /MC
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Catch up with the Data Governance Series from this overview blog post. And as always, if you have any questions or would like to discuss your Data Governance efforts further, feel free to email or call myself or the Backup Tech team.