Introduction
You know that data is the most valuable asset of your organization, but what about its management? In this post, we’ll look at the ways modern data management can help you protect your company’s most important asset and give you the flexibility to adapt as new challenges come along.
1. Know your data
- Know your data.
Knowing and understanding your data is the first step in creating an effective, efficient and secure data management strategy. So what do you need to know? First, ask yourself: What is the data? Where is it stored? How much of it do we have? Who owns it (and who has access)? Who has access to this information currently (or could potentially get their hands on it)? What are its characteristics–is it structured or unstructured; big or small; text, images or video clips; highly sensitive or not so much at all? And finally–what are its limitations (in terms of size/type/etc.).
2. Have a plan for the future
It’s important to have a plan for the future. You don’t want your data to become a confusing mess, or worse, go missing altogether. To ensure that doesn’t happen:
- Think about how your data will be used in the future. Who will use it? How much of it do they need? Will they always need all of it or just parts? If so, which parts?
- Consider how the types and amount of information stored on your systems will change over time as new projects are launched and old ones are completed. These changes may affect how accessible different types of information are at any given time–and therefore what kind(s) of storage solution(s) would best serve those needs at any given moment in time based on their current state (i.e., whether they’re being actively accessed by researchers/analysts).
3. Consider where you might be in five years
In the next five years, you might be:
- Starting a new company or project.
- Planning to move into a bigger office space.
- Thinking about hiring more employees and bringing on board consultants to help with projects that are too big for your team alone (or just because).
4. Don’t forget about security and governance
If you’re reading this, it’s likely that the idea of “data” has crossed your mind. Data is everywhere: in systems and applications, on servers and hard drives, in databases and spreadsheets. But what exactly is “data”? And why should we care about it?
Data are facts that can be collected, stored and analyzed to help inform decision making or provide insights into business processes. It can come from various sources such as sensors (for example temperature data from weather stations), social media posts or surveys completed by customers at a store checkout counter. Data comes in many forms–textual information like emails or tweets; numerical information like measurements taken by an IoT device; images such as photos uploaded onto Facebook–and all these different types need different kinds of storage solutions depending on how large they are (how much space they take up) as well as how often they’re accessed by users within an organization who want access for their own purposes (e-mailing someone else).
Data is valuable, but it also has to be managed properly to avoid risk.
Data is valuable, but it also has to be managed properly to avoid risk.
Data is a liability. It can be stolen, lost or destroyed by accident or maliciously. This can result in significant financial loss for your company–and even personal injury if you’re dealing with sensitive information like medical records or personal data about customers and employees.
Data is a resource that needs to be protected in order for it to remain useful over time: If a hard drive crashes while holding important documents (the contents of which cannot easily be restored from backups), those documents may become inaccessible forever unless they’re transferred onto another physical device before being stored away safely somewhere else where no one can access them without permission from whoever owns those files now…which could very well be yourself!
Conclusion
Data is valuable, but it also has to be managed properly to avoid risk. We hope this guide has given you a better idea of where your organization stands on managing its data and what steps can be taken next.
