Controlling unstructured data using metadata and a data management system improves the management and use of unstructured data in companies, while also reducing risks, says data management specialist company Soarsoft International director Chris Hathaway.

Metadata provides information about data. It is used to categorise vast amounts of unstructured data, often stored in a myriad of repositories or cloud services that comprise a company’s information technology (IT) environment.

These metadata categories are often used for IT governance purposes, for example, to identify, categorise or delete documents or data that contain personal information to comply with internal policies and legislation, such as the Protection of Personal Information Act, or to limit access to this data only to authorised users.

Further, companies can also use systems that actively source, access, analyse and categorise unstructured data throughout IT environments, including data residing in cloud services. This improves data governance and policy, enabling companies to maintain active insight and map out the movements of data in their organisations, as well as implement actions on the data.

“Other areas that this file analysis process can impact include improving and enforcing defensible deletion, and reducing unnecessary retention of data to lower the IT costs and legal risks to the company,” Hathaway explains.

Metadata is a powerful and efficient tool to organise unstructured data on-site or in the cloud and to determine what actions must be taken, he notes.

“The Smart Information Server software that we use finds unstructured data, classifies it and enables the data to be managed where it resides. Managing data in place is the most efficient method, as the metadata used to classify and take action on the data is lightweight and can easily be accessed over Internet connections without moving the data itself, which is inefficient for large or distributed repositories.”

Further, file analysis enables companies to discover what information they have and how useful it may be to improve storage and the use of the data.

“Knowing what the unstructured data in a company’s IT environment is enables the company to use the platform to take action, like injecting more metadata onto the files for better future identification [and] moving or deleting the data.”

This manage-in-place practice means that companies can apply all the requisite policies, security and legal actions to data. Better understanding of and control over the data also means companies can, consequently, use hosted services in other territories while remaining compliant with local regulations, says Hathaway.

Identity and access management are increasingly important for corporate governance, and for ensuring the security around sensitive and/or personal information within the terabytes or petabytes of unstructured data is critical.

“File analysis allows the organisation to map the data that users and groups have access to, as well as target sensitive data and monitor access or alert governance teams to any changes,” he concludes.