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What are you waiting for?

Remediate your File Shares and Govern your Information Assets

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What are you waiting for?Remediate your File Shares and Govern your Information Assets

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Synopsis:• With the digital transformation of business continuing unabated, organizations find themselves with

exploding amounts of electronic content. A lot of that content is “dark” content scattered across the enterprise, in shared drives, cloud repositories, obsolete applications, etc. It is a mix of content that is valuable, obsolete, orphaned, duplicated, etc.

• Organizations need to trim the fat… i.e. go to the proverbial gym… in order to…• Gain visibility about where this dark content is and what it resides• Take remediation actions regarding redundant and obsolete content• Identify and extract valuable content from obsolete applications (enabling their decommissioning)• Bring valuable content under governance controls

• Where this is most needed is in Shared Drives, where surprisingly high percentages of valuable content lay uncontrolled and unmanaged.

• This session will explore these issues and highlight the steps needed to remedy this situation as part of the Information Governance journey…

Presenter:• Bassam Zarkout is a technology executive with 24 years of experience in IG, RM, and other Content

Management related domains. His experience includes the implementation of his vision for an innovative IG platform based on the principle of separating the rules from the tools from information repositories, thus enabling in-place governance of Information Assets. He is also active in the IoT and AI spaces as well as the application IG principles (especially Privacy) to IoT data.

• Bassam lives in Ottawa, Canada.b.zarkout@everteam.com

@bzarkout

+1.613.7913033

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About Everteam

25 years experience and innovation in development and delivery of ECM, Archiving, RM, IG, and BPM solutions

• Focuses on legal and compliant environments• Enables enterprises to build and manage content-driven processes

• Advanced and natively-developed content analytics, baked into offering• File Analytics targeted at various use cases

• File Share Remediation, Cloud Migration, Application Decommissioning, etc.• 1300+ customers, billions of documents

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BostonParis (HQ)

BangaloreHong Kong

Dubai

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Major Pain Points re Corporate Information aka Information Assets

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Bene

fits

of D

igita

l Tra

nsfo

rmat

ion March towards digitization

•Delivered significant benefits to organizations

Creation of Massive Volumes of Corporate Information•Corporate information is “lifeblood of organization”

Cha

lleng

es o

f Dig

ital T

rans

form

atio

n Exploding volume of corporate information created, stored and consumed•Exabytes, Zettabytes and Yottabytes

Information landscape increasingly complex•Human-created documents and emails, high-volume reports from business systems, social media content, IoT data

Information scattered across many systems•Many platforms•On-premises and cloud•Lack of visibility re context and content of corporate information

Growing Data Residency issues•Differences in regulatory and legal requirements across jurisdictions

Ris

e of

Info

rmat

ion

Asse

ts New term has emerged•ALL corporate information•Documents and records•On-premises and cloud•Email•Corporate social media communications

•Output from business systems•Physical

Insights about Information Assets •What are they?•Where are they?•How much exists?•What do they contain semantically?

•How to look after them?•Risks contained in them?•What is their value?•Actions to be taken on them?

Nee

d fo

r Inf

orm

atio

n G

over

nanc

e Definition still maturing•What problem is it solving?• Is it a strategy?• Is it a program?•Is it a set of technologies?

Orphan function in the organization•Who is the corporate sponsor?•Who leads it? Chief Data Officer, Chief Digital Officer, CIO, Chief IG Officer, Legal Counsel, Chief Risk Officer, Data Protection Officer, etc.

Budget•Who owns it?•What is ROI?

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Information Governance: Strategy Program Technology

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What is Information Governance?

IG Strategy•Vision, Mission, Mandate, Culture•Analysts perspective

IG Program•Framework for executing the IG Strategy•Consultants perspective

IG Technology•Set of tools used to power the IG Program•Vendors perspective

Information Governance Program

Cost RiskValue

Reduce cost of ownership of corporate

information

Reduce legal and regulatory compliance risks associated

with owning information

Increase business value of information

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Challenges with the Governance of Information Assets

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Information Assets scattered across the EnterpriseShared Drives, SharePoint, Cloud Repositories, ECM Systems,

Email Servers and Archives, Business Applications, etc. Challenges with Information Assets

• Exploding volume of corporate information created, stored and consumed

• Data Residency issues

• Data Privacy issues: PII, PHI, PCI, etc.

• Information scattered across many systems

• Lots of Dark Content

• Not all Information Assets are created equal (different Categories such as Business Records, ROT, ESI, etc.) and may require different handling rules

Dark Content

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Lifecycle Management of Information Assets

Not all Information Assets are created equal

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A) B

usin

ess

Rec

ords

B) E

ssen

tial B

usin

ess

Con

tent

(with

mul

tiple

sub

-cat

egor

ies)

C) R

OT

Con

tent

D) ESI

This category may be divided into several sub-categories

Information Assets Categories

Information Asset Categories Actions

A) Business Records • Submit to System of Records• Apply immutability• Manage lifecycle in accordance with corporate

retention policies

B) Essential Business Content • Do nothing?• Migrate to Cloud Repositories, SharePoint, etc.?• May become Business Records at some point• May become ROT after a while

C) ROT Content Redundant Obsolete and Trivial

• Delete?• Quarantine?

D) ESI Electronically Stored Information

• Identify, Preserve, Collect, Review, Produce, etc.• Hold in Place?

Time

Activ

ity

Regulatory Filing Regulatory FilingAnalytics

day month year decade

Disposal

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Sample ROT Definitions (Redundant, Obsolete, Trivial)

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Main rules

Duplicates• Exact duplicates, minus Golden originals

• Near duplicates• De-NIST rules• Other (tbd)

Other?

Information Assets not needed for business or

any other purposeAND Lifecycle does not

depend on events AND Not responsiveto any litigation AND/OR

Not accessed for specific period time AND/OR Older than

certain age AND/OR Older than farthest reaching litigation

How to identify GOLDEN “originals” versus mere copies?What to do with GOLDEN “originals” versus mere copies?

Golden Copy Other Copy Other Copy Other CopyOther Copy

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File Share Realities and Issues

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Organizations tend to take pragmatic views re management of Information Assets• High-value and process-centric content managed within ECM systems• Significant amounts of content (40%?) scattered in File Shares

• Under control of end-users• Worse… under nobody’s control

• Increased use of cloud-based Enterprise File Syncing and Sharing systems• Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, etc.

Perceived low-cost and practicality of File Shares has led to…• End-users relate to them• Uncontrolled growth of File Shares usage• Loss of knowledge, insight and governance of Information Assets

• Proliferation of duplicated and orphaned Information Assets• Old projects, departed employees, etc.

• Perpetuation of legacy/obsolete applications

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File Share Realities and Issues: quite messy…

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Increased darkness of content• Loss of value & insight about Information Assets

High IT costs• Storage• Barriers for decommissioning of legacy applications that are expensive to maintain and operate

• Barriers to cloud adoption, especially EFSS• Etc.

Increased risks and costs• Increased legal & non-compliance risks and costs• Barriers & increased risks for GDPR compliance in particular

• Barriers & increased risks for M&As

Remediation and Migration of File Share Content is essential !

Need visibility through Dark Content

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File Share Remediation: Process powered by File Analysis software

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Step 1: Define Remediation Policies and Rules

Step 2: Define Remediation Execution Process

Step 3: Execute Remediation Process

Step 4: Maintain (Repeat Process)

Prerequisite: Identify and Process ESI content and Place them on HoldBefore actual File Share Remediation work can start (i.e. Step 3), the organization’s Legal Department MUST identify ESI and process it (EDRM.net framework).Specialized eDiscovery tools may be utilized for this work.

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What Gartner says about File Analysis software

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Emerging solutions made of disparate technologies to enable data architects, legal & security professionals, storage managers, and business analysts to

• Understand and manage unstructured data stores• Reduce risk and costs

• Make better information management decisions

Market Definition• Analyze, index, search, track and report on file metadata

and file content, enabling organizations to take action onfiles according to what was identified

• Assists organizations in understanding unstructured data:• File Shares, email databases, EFSS, RM, ECM, SharePoint, etc.

• Content analysis based on identity and access entitlements• Example: PII, PCI, PHI, Personal Data (per GDPR)

• Enables remediation actions• Delete, migrate, alert, report, etc.

Gartner predicts that by 2020…

50% of midsize/large enterprises will implement file analysis for managing unstructured data (up from < 10% today)

80% of current FA capabilities will be embedded into overall risk mitigation, storage optimization and IG platforms

80% of FA vendors that do not provide actual data remediation will exit market

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File Analysis software: Content Analytics and Actions

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Content Analytics

Sources of Information AssetsShared Drives, SharePoint, Cloud Repositories, ECM Systems,

Email Servers and Archives, Business Applications, etc.

Perform corporate approved actionsDo nothing, delete, quarantine, declare as record,

migrate, hold, archive, redact, update, etc.

Generate Content Awareness and Insight

Define corporate rules, policies and actions

SecurityLegal

Actions

Corporate

Dashboard

FA UserDiscover content

Generate benefits and valueMitigate risks, enforce corporate governance controls, increase operational efficiency, perform analytics and

extract insight about content, etc.$$

Benefits

Manage process

Manage

2

3

1

4

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File Analysis software: Content Analytics and Actions

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Step Process Tasks

Define Remediation Policies and Rules• Define Information Asset Categories• Define remediation policies and rules for each class• Define golden copies and their handling rules

Define Remediation Execution Process• Identify and inventory File Shares• Assess volume of content in File Shares• Identify business nature of content• Determine final state of each File Share (keep, decommission, etc.)• Define batch-based process and prioritize processing of batches• Connect to content sources (File Shares)

Execute Remediation Process (batches)• Discover content (crawl File Shares and index metadata and content)• Identify content categories (Business Records, Business Content, ROT)• Identify specific terms and patterns (example PII, PHI, etc.) and tag content• Extract metadata and content• Sort, filter, cluster, facet results• Prepare content for IG actions (migrate, delete, quarantine, etc.)• Perform actions on content (Business Records, ROT, etc.)

Maintain• Repeat process to maintain File Shares content over time

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3

1

4

Important: Governance by Design and Privacy by DesignDefining is fundamental and key to the Governance by Design and Privacy by Design aspects of the IG Program.

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To Summarize

Organizations have taken pragmatic view re the management of Information Assets:

• High-value and process-centric content is managed within ECM solutions

• Perception that File Shares are “low-cost” and practical to operate

• Significant amounts of content scattered in File Shares… can be 40% or more

• Increasing usage of cloud-based Enterprise File Syncing and Sharing systems

Result is a Big Mess• Uncontrolled growth of File Shares• Lots of Dark Content that may be valuable

• Loss of insight and governance of Information Assets in File Shares

• Duplicates & orphan/abandoned file spaces: old projects, departed employees, etc.

• Barriers to Legacy application decommissioning• High IT costs• Hard to leverage valuable Information Assets

• Increased legal and non-compliance risks

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To Summarize

Organizations must take steps to remediate contents of File Shares

• Business Records• Bring under formal RM process controls

• Business Content• Do nothing, migrate, etc.

• ROT• Delete, quarantine, etc.

• ESI to be done by Legal before remediation work starts

• Collect• Analyze• Place on hold• Produce

Remediation of File Shares is a Process• Process is straight-forward

File Analysis software to power process• Advanced analytics capabilities• Advanced actions capabilities important

• Beyond what traditional eDiscovery tools provide

Benefits of File Share Remediation• Reduced IT costs• Reduced legal and compliance risks and costs• Reduced barriers for cloud adoption

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Time to act is now!

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Questions and Answers

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b.zarkout@everteam.com

@bzarkout

+1.613.7913033