Information Governance: chances are this is a term you hear frequently. But does anyone really know what it means? There are many different definitions of Information Governance, but most incorporate: policies, procedures, data structures, and controls that aim to protect enterprise information from risks both inside and outside of the organization.
Despite it being buzzworthy, not every company has taken the leap to implement their own plan. This is likely due to the varied scale of Information Governance plans, making them seem daunting to implement.
If you haven’t started yet, I advise you start now for the following reasons.
1. Every day you wait an exponential amount of information becomes vulnerable.
Back in 2012, IBM reported that the total amount of information produced by the human race from the beginning of time to 2003 was 5 billion gigabytes. By 2011 the human race was producing 5 billion gigabytes every two days and it was predicted that by 2012 we would be producing the same amount every 10 minutes. Every year we produce an exponentially growing amount of data; the longer you wait, the bigger the hurdle to implement an information governance plan will be.
2. The longer you wait the more places your data will be scattered.
It seems like every day new cloud file sharing and storage services become available. With Dropbox, Google Drive, One Drive, Egnyte, iCloud, and more easily available to employees, every day you wait, more and more documents are stored out of your control. As a matter of fact, according to AIIM 30% of users have stored information on unofficial file sharing sites.
3. When your employees don’t know the Information Governance plan they can’t help protect your information.
According to the NSI, nearly 75% of data breaches are caused by untrained employees who expose access to data. Data exposure can happen in a multitude of ways including uploading documents to unsecured sites or giving access to the wrong people. Without a plan, your organization doesn’t stand a chance of training your employees and protecting from employee caused accidental data breaches. According to The Computing Technology Industry Association, 90% of organizations who did properly train their employees saw a reduction in security breaches.
4. Data breaches can cause you a pretty penny.
According to Symantec’s 2013 Cost of a Data Breach Study, the cost of each breached or lost record is $136. With thousands or even millions of records stored by your company, this cost can quickly add up. In the US the average cost per data breach was $5.4 million. Information Governance plans can help you mitigate the risks and costs associated with data breaches.
Convinced, but don’t know where to get started?
I recommend starting with materials provided by either AIIM or ARMA, both great organizations and communities dedicated to information management.
You can find AIIM’s resources here: http://www.aiim.org/Resource-Centers/Information-Governance
You can find ARMA’s resources here: http://content.arma.org/IMM/online/InformationManagement.aspx
About SeeUnity
SeeUnity has over 40 years of experience helping organizations integrate, migrate, synchronize, and mobilize their content to help organizations take control of their ECM systems. For more information about SeeUnity, visit www.seeunity.com.
