Most businesses gather and store information every day without much thought. A spreadsheet here, an email attachment there, a customer form, employee records, files in cloud storage. It all accumulates.
The problem starts when a business can’t answer a simple question, “What data do we actually have?”
Good data management and compliance involves knowing what information is out there, where it is stored and who uses it. But for many businesses, that clear picture is easier to say than to do.
Why Is It Difficult to Know What Data a Business Has?
Data rarely sits still.
As the business grows, employees begin to use different applications and storage systems for their daily work. Information can be in:
- Spreadsheets
- Email inboxes
- Shared folders
- Cloud storage
- Databases
- Business applications
- Employee devices
- Archived files
Some of these locations may be managed by the IT team and others may have been created by individual employees or different departments.
This can create a dispersed data environment over time in which no one has the full picture of what is being stored.
Start by Listing Where Business Data Is Stored
The first thing you want to do is find out where your business stores data.
It doesn’t mean opening each file individually. Look at the big picture first.
Think about all the tools and systems you use in your business every day. Where do workers write documents? Where do records go? Which cloud platforms are used? Do you have systems with information that are old?
A simple list of these locations can make your data landscape more immediately understandable.
Know What Kind of Data You Have
Knowing where the data is stored is half the battle. A business has to get a handle on what sort of information is in those systems.
For example a company could have:
- Employe Details
- Financial Books
- Business documents.
- Contact Details
- Customer files
- Contracts
- Identification cards
- Internal communication
Not all files are equal in weight or sensitivity.
Knowing what is different types of information helps businesses to know what data is more important and where compliance requirements may be needed.
Don’t Forget About Old and Unused Data
Data that no one is currently using is one of the easiest things to overlook.
An old spreadsheet might be sitting in a shared folder. Archived drives may still have some previous employee records. Documents may be duplicated across multiple systems.
These files aren’t part of someone’s day-to-day work, so they can easily be overlooked.
By regularly reviewing old information, businesses can understand what they still have and if some data is still needed or not.
Ask Who Has Access to Business Data
Knowing what data you have is not enough for companies, they need to know who can see it as well.
For example, an employee may be granted access to a shared folder simply because they were given access months ago for a temporary project. Someone else might have switched jobs but still have access to information from their previous one.
Regular access reviews help businesses identify unnecessary access and keep information organised.
This is especially true when handling sensitive or confidential information.
Data Discovery Can Make the Process Easier
For a small business that only has a few files, manually checking data might appear feasible. However, with a growing number of systems and files, searching information manually gets progressively more complicated.
To find the information you are looking for, consider data discovery.
When you discover the data, the main job is to find and locate information through various systems and environments so that the business owners, management, and employees have clear insight into the data they are sitting on and how it is distributed through the company.
Solutions like EzSecure will enable your company to spot and classify sensitive information across environments. Rather than depending merely on manual searches, companies can see more clearly where sensitive data is located and what categories of data they are handling.
The ultimate goal is not just to locate more data but to understand the data that is already there.
Create a Simple Data Inventory
Once an organization is aware of data locations and information stored, creating a basic data inventory can help the company to easily control data storage and management.
An example minimal inventory contains:
The initial setup of the process shouldn’t be complicated. Teams will get a fair idea of their data through a simple inventory.
Apart from the growth of the business, the list of the products in the inventory can be extended and refreshed.
Review Your Data Regularly
Data continues changing.
Employees are hired, clients are added, software is released, outdated systems are removed, documents are duplicated and created.
Hence, you must know your data to some extent. That’s not a one off job.
Companies are recommended to periodically check their data to locate what’s changed, outdated, doubled, and where it’s stored recently.
Routine checking helps in preparation for compliance rules as well because by then the business is already familiar with the information it has been holding through the time.
Why Knowing Your Data Matters
If a business is not aware of the data that they have or what kind of data exists at least, it is almost impossible for them to make accurate decisions regarding which kind of data to retain for long-term purpose, how to handle different data types, what to do concerning confidentiality, and how to ensure their company complies with all relevant privacy laws.
Better visibility can also help reduce time wastage. Rather than an employee needing to go through several different systems or applications, if he or she wants to find a particular record, he or she knows where and how to find it because of increased visibility in data.
In addition to this, having data awareness means understanding your data which enables the Data Management function to be turned from being a guessing game to becoming a well-defined process.
Final Thoughts
Learning where your business’s data is stored doesn’t have to be rocket science.
You can begin by finding out where data is stored, recognizing what different kinds of data your business owns, checking out paper and/or electronic files that haven’t been touched for a while, identifying access level, and constantly updating the database of information sources.
In fact, as a company increases its operations, tracking all the data manually can get very difficult. That is why having good data discovery and classification procedures can help your team better understand what kinds of data they possess.
Literally, the very first thing on the path of improved data management and compliance is: just get to know the data that you have.
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