Using data profiling to mitigate 7 'red flag' information risks.

• Author: McGann, Jim

Data profiling technology can help an organization identify what electronic information it has and where it is located, which is the first step to ensuring that information governance policies are applied to it, reducing the organization's costs and mitigating its seven greatest information risks.

Today's records and information management (RIM) professionals are tasked with mitigating the risks that come along with ever-changing regulations and escalating threats to information security, all while controlling exponentially growing data costs.

More like detectives than RIM professionals, they are charged with uncovering sensitive records, such as Outlook personal storage table (PST) e-mall archives and aged e-malls created by former employees, unencrypted files containing personally identifiable information (PII), and copies of contracts and research data lost within network file shares.

But before they can find and manage this data, they must determine what information exists across the enterprise, where it exists, and who created it. To address the risks that come with not knowing this, some RIM professionals are using data profiling.

Data Profiling Defined

Data profiling examines data from all sources and collects metadata-level information on the content to create a searchable and reportable repository about the information, identifying such things as the information's owner, age, type of file, location, date last accessed or modified, and whether it is a duplicate.

Data profiling allows RIM professionals to create a map of what data exists and where, so they can actively enforce and audit compliance with the information governance policies that dictate the use, disposition, retention, and management of corporate data, protect the firm's assets, and manage long-term risk.

This helps organizations control costs and risks, as well as address the seven greatest issues--red flags--that have a critical impact on their electronic records systems today: PII, hidden PSTs, user shares, departmental servers, legacy backup tapes, aged data, and large multimedia files.

The Information Governance Landscape

The volume of information is exploding. More and more business information is digitized, and users create data 24/7 as they carry their office in their pockets. It is estimated that data growth is reaching unprecedented levels, with Gartner stating in its June 2012 research report "Organizational Collaboration and the Right Retention Policies Can Minimize Archived Data and Storage Demands" that the volume is...