Management problems of enterprise storage

The information (or data) is one of the three most important assets of your company together with the staff and your customers. Without your data, your company has no meaning and no possibility of doing business - the efforts of marketing and sales can not be conceived and implemented, sales revenues can not be optimized and the maximum penetration of marketing cross-selling and it is impossible to complete, manage post-sales and referral business is nonexistent, and to top it all, you will be in a world of trouble with the IRS, regulatory agencies and the business world at large in general.

The data protection is of vital importance for the wellbeing of your business, but at the same time, you still must use this precious resource. Staff must be able to access information about customers, especially when they are customer facing roles such as sales or customer care. The information must be able to be handled and providing relevant information and appropriate to the point of use and in a way that is commensurate with the needs of the work function. The business data must also be able to be summarized and presented in a format that can be used effectively by managers. Finally, the information must also be able to be protected so data integrity is beyond reproach and is also capable of being used by auditors and other agents for deposit accounts and statements of other business for tax purposes and investors.

As you can see - this is an enormous task that encompasses every aspect of a business.

The network of companies should be secure and optimized which means that a regular and repeated the process, which analyzes and monitors the activities of the existing network and usage. How to access user data? What do they need the data for? How secure is the data? What audit trail is available to make changes to critical data such as financial documents? What happens in case of loss of data, for example, due to an accident? What happens to the business if data is lost? In the current trends and existing solutions can be used to improve the usefulness of the data?

These questions and many more need to be asked and answered. The consequences also need to be realistically assessed and quantified the risk, preferably with a fixed cost in the event that risk becoming reality.

While a company faces many risks not associated with loss of data, such as the risk of being sued for defective products, considerations must be followed to assess the risk of data loss. No company will be able to provide protection against all risks and in some cases, delivery and implementation of a solution may not be convenient - it's better to self-insure and manage the risk if it arises. For this reason it is important to set a dollar amount in terms of cost when considering the risk of data loss. Against this is the evaluation of the cost of protection against such an event - becomes in fact, cost-benefit exercise.

Where risks are identified and solutions implemented, there is the question of management solutions and ensure that the risks covered were properly addressed. Moreover, taking into account developments in the IT industry is experiencing on a daily basis, managing change is a fact of life of any IT manager. In essence, the circle is closed to our starting point in which we conducted an initial needs analysis and data protection. Now, the question is more than simple "tick box" exercises and more to instill a state of mind in the field, but not just management, but every member of staff. This can be achieved by scheduling regular checkups, providing staff training and the compilation and distribution of corporate policies on data and network usage ....