Steve Leeper, VP of Product Marketing, Datadobi; Roman Toda, Chief Standardization Officer, Foxit; Larry O’Connor, Founder and CEO, Other World Computing; answer.
Steve Leeper, VP of Product Marketing, Datadobi
In the years to come, unstructured data will take its rightful inarguable place as every organization’s most valuable knowledge resource – and consequently, source of competitive advantage. Likewise, the ability to find, control, manage and protect it will become priority #1 for those in the data center to the C-suite.
Unfortunately, unstructured data may also contain a multitude of risks that must be dealt with. These risks include:
- Regulations Compliance – Managing unstructured data in regulated industries is complex and challenging – each sector has its own specific rules. The consequences of non-compliance can be severe – including hefty fines, reputational damage and legal issues
- Orphaned Data – Former employees leave behind large amounts of unstructured data, contributing to the growing data volume expected to reach 175 zettabytes by 2025, much of which is orphaned with no owner and no association with any business area – posing significant security, compliance, operational and reputational risks
- “Illegal” Data – Includes any non-business-related content that should not be stored on corporate storage systems – can enter corporate networks through the proliferation of unstructured data and personal device usage.
- WORM Data – WORM (Write Once, Read Many) data storage ensures data can be written only once and read multiple times without being modified. This storage method is used to maintain important records in an unaltered state for compliance with regulations. WORM data should be stored for the required period of time but not longer.
To overcome these and other risks, an organization must seek a solution(s) that provide:
- Full Insights – comprehensive visibility into a data landscape, illuminating everything from ownership to activity levels
- Customizable Dashboards and Reporting – fully customizable dashboards for monitoring and reporting, providing insights into compliance status, data health and operational efficiency
- Data Organization – organizes data efficiently, tagging and classifying it according to business and legal requirements
- Policy-Based Data Movement – facilitates archival, cleanup and other data management actions based on predefined policies ensuring ongoing compliance with industry regulations
- Advanced Integrity Protection (AIP) – Crucial for industries where data breaches can lead to significant legal and financial penalties
- Vendor Agnostic Support – operates across heterogeneous storage systems and clouds – ensuring optimal capabilities, protection and security as well as vendor lock-in avoidance, cost-efficiency and maximum ROI.
Roman Toda, Chief Standardization Officer, Foxit
Unstructured data holds enormous potential.
Advancements in artificial intelligence algorithms, natural language understanding, computer vision, speech recognition and other techniques transform the way unstructured data are handled. By automating complex tasks, discovering hidden patterns and generating actionable insights businesses trust and rely more on unstructured data. There are risks in the learning stage when you need structured data that AI models learn from, those are hard to get to. If all use the same AI models for data understanding then it’s more complicated to gain competitive advantage.
It is unrealistic to expect that we will reach a point when all data will be born as structured. Quite the opposite. Unstructured data is cheaper and easier to generate and is already part of our life and business processes. It’s essential to understand the complexity of its processing. Companies need to be willing to invest in the tools, infrastructure and expertise in order to manage it effectively. By understanding and mitigating the associated risks, businesses can unlock valuable insights, drive innovation and maintain a competitive advantage.
As a simplified validation of processes and tools businesses can try to answer easy questions:
- Are my tools able to convert unstructured data to structured?
- Can I identify sensitive data and effectively redact them?
- How do I build trust in the tools I use? And am I confident they do good work for me?
- Can my tools make me trust the data I receive?
- Am I able to connect my structured data with unstructured content?
- Is the infrastructure I use able to scale for processing a lot of data?
- Is the price of data understanding lower than generating the structured data?
- Are my tools able to take advantage of embedded structure?
If you can’t answer the questions, it’s probably a good idea to reevaluate your strategy and look for a better tools set.
Larry O’Connor, Founder and CEO, Other World Computing (OWC)
Let’s start with unstructured data is complex – it doesn’t fit neatly in a spreadsheet or database. Add to that, it is usually sprawled across onsite, remote and cloud locations on heterogeneous platforms and a multitude of formats.
Storing, managing and importantly retrieving it can be virtually impossible – that means missed insights and opportunities, generally putting you at a competitive disadvantage.
Meeting internal governance, external compliance, and legal mandates is likely also a challenge when you don’t have your unstructured data under control. Again, it is tough to manage and protect specific data when you don’t know where it is (or that it even exists).
Holding on to data longer than you must also puts your organization at legal risk. Retention of no longer needed data beyond legal retention periods, even if not a breach of today’s complex regulations, also can cause substantially higher costs in any kind of legal interaction where discovery is sought.
Last but not least, many organizations have trouble backing-up and recovering unstructured data – simply due to its sheer volume, as well as its aforementioned complexity. A natural or manmade disaster, or even an innocent mistake, can put the organization at great risk of downtime and an operations disruption.
It is critical to partner with a consultant and/or technology provider that counts unstructured data management among their core competencies. This can help you to avoid the common – and not so common – gotchas and save you from wasting money on solutions unable to meet both your short- and long-term objectives.
A strategic partner that offers a wide range of solutions is also critical, as every organization’s needs are unique – a one-size-fits-all approach just won’t cut it.
Invest in innovative, reliable, high-performance data management and storage solutions. This will enhance data accessibility, reduce the risk of data loss, and optimize performance – allowing your organization to extract valuable insights, turning your unstructured data into a strategic asset that drives growth and innovation.
Prioritize internal governance and external regulations compliance – make sure you regularly audit your practices to ensure compliance with industry regulations and standards.
Establish a robust backup and recovery plan – which must include regular backups, secure storage and regular testing of recovery processes. You need to be sure that it can be executed quickly and seamlessly, so that data can be recovered and operations maintained, in the event of a data loss or corruption.
