Information governance (IG) has become an essential component for successful business strategies. Without a solid plan in place, companies put themselves at unnecessary risk. And while records managers and legal departments understand the immense value that IG brings to data management, the sheer magnitude of the problem and the lack of solutions causes IT professionals often focus their efforts elsewhere. Without business involvement to classify current data and delete old data, the quick fix is often the purchase of more cloud storage to keep everything. The reasoning is, “It’s cheap. It’s easy. And it gets us by for now. Why not?” However, this approach has the potential to do more harm than good.
Outdated and irrelevant documents take up space (often 2x-3x when you consider backups and DR storage) and make important and vital documents much harder to find, creating huge inefficiencies within a company. Additionally, consider the following: Data breaches are no longer a matter of if, but a matter of when. The more data you store, the greater the potential for damage that may result in the eventual breach.
Data security and compliance regulations should be the main concerns driving IT managers to implement a focused IG model. Retention schedules are one of the best ways in which IT departments can assure that company information is being stored in a secure and efficient manner. And CIOs should take the lead in looking for tools that can enforce retention schedules in a transparent way across the enterprise.
It is the responsibility of CIOs to embrace and explain the value of IG to their IT departments and to participate with the business owners in the creation and implementation of that plan. Increasingly, IT drives the business, and the overall success is often predicated upon how efficiently—or inefficiently—the department manages data. IG will only become more crucial as data continues to expand. The sooner a company can get their IT departments on board with a plan, the better.
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