In today’s data-driven world, businesses generate vast amounts of data. Nearly every operational process involves data in some way, shape, or form — from internal reporting and emails to transactions with customers. However, while data can be a powerful tool, providing invaluable insights to organizations, it can also present numerous challenges if it is not handled properly.
Specifically, if data is disorganized and does not adhere to regulations, it can put companies at risk of having their sensitive data compromised, make the data difficult to access, and lead to compliance issues.
Database archiving helps address these issues by enabling more efficient data management. With smart data archiving solutions, companies can preserve important data for long-term use, while also ensuring that data is safe, accessible, and complies with regulations and privacy policies.
What Is Data Archiving and Why Is It Important?
Data archiving is a process that involves separating data that is no longer being used into backup storage systems for long-term retention and preservation. The idea behind archiving is that it ensures important data remains intact for easy access when it is needed in the future.
It’s important to implement archiving strategies to separate active and inactive data because if all data is kept on primary systems, it can decrease performance and lead to increased costs. However, when inactive data is moved to a backup system, it keeps it organized and out of the way but still easy to access when it is needed.
This takes the load off of primary systems using active data, cuts down on primary storage expenses, and ensures the inactive data is safe and secure so it remains in compliance with regulations. Data archiving also helps improve data recovery processes. As data archiving systems are highly secure and well-organized, it makes it easier to retrieve data after a disaster, which can improve operational resilience.
Data Archiving Best Practices
When creating a data archiving strategy, it’s important to consider the following best practices to ensure safety, accessibility, and compliance.
1. Know Your Local and Industry-Specific Data Laws
When archiving your data, it’s critical that you adhere to industry-specific compliance standards. This involves researching and identifying relevant regulations, laws, and industry guidelines regarding data management and archiving.
For example, there are varying state data privacy laws concerning the collection, storage, safeguarding, and disposal of personal data. Some of these laws apply to government agencies while others include private organizations in certain industries. So, make sure you are aware of your local and industry-specific data laws before creating an archiving strategy.
2. Establish Clear Governance Policies
Another important step to take before archiving is to establish clear data governance policies. This can include determining what data will be archived, what roles and responsibilities there are for those involved, how long data will be archived, and who can access the data.
3. Test for Accessibility
A key element in data archiving is ensuring easy retrieval of the data when it is needed in the future. Most data archiving tools or software are designed to keep your data well organized, however, it’s still important to test the systems regularly to ensure that data can be easily accessed when needed.
4. Secure Sensitive Data
It is vital that security plays an important role in your data archiving process. This is particularly true for protecting business data in remote work settings. If you have multiple people accessing stored data from separate locations, it can increase the risk of your data being compromised due to unsecured networks, lack of IT support, and unencrypted personal devices.
That said, whether your organization deals with remote employees or not, advanced cybersecurity measures are critical. To avoid security issues, it’s important to limit who has access to the data, use multifactor authentication and strong passwords, and make sure you are encrypting your data. It also helps to educate staff members on how to properly handle data to ensure it is safe and secure.
5. Perform Continuous Monitoring
Continuous monitoring is crucial to ensure data integrity. You’ll want to monitor environmental conditions where the data is stored, such as humidity, temperature, and power supply. It’s important to maintain optimal conditions to help preserve the data and prevent hardware failures.
Regular monitoring is also important to ensure your data archiving process remains compliant with regulations. Compliance checks should never just be a one-and-done deal. Over time, processes and behaviors surrounding data archiving can become lax, leading to regulatory issues. So, it’s vital that you regularly monitor these processes to ensure they are always valid and compliant.
6. Automate Data Archiving with Advanced Software Solutions
Automation can streamline the data archiving process and reduce errors that can compromise the safety and integrity of your data. For example, data archiving software can automate the deletion process, so you are only holding onto necessary data as well as making sure you are not holding onto data for longer than you are allowed to per regulations.
This kind of software can also automate compliance checks, monitoring, scheduled archiving tasks, and error notifications when an issue is detected. Data archiving software can also come equipped with technical support, auditing tools, and cybersecurity features to protect your data.
Data Archiving: Future Trends and Challenges
As data archiving grows in popularity, we will begin to see new trends emerge in this area that can even further improve data storage capabilities, including enhanced security, accessibility, and compliance. Some of the predicted data archiving trends include:
- Cloud-based archiving
- Archiving-as-a-service
- Archiving mobile apps
- AI-driven archiving
- Compliance-driven archiving
- Real-time archiving
- Blockchain-based archiving
Along with these emerging trends, however, we can also expect to see some new challenges. Migration issues could be an issue in some cases when switching over to different systems. With archiving-as-a-service, there could be service interruptions depending on the vendor as well as limited customization. For mobile apps, safety will be something to consider as mobile devices are less secure and more vulnerable to loss and theft.
As some of these new archiving services will likely require advanced infrastructure needs, there could be more of an upfront cost to create a more robust infrastructure. Newer technologies are also subject to uncertain regulations and tend to cost more due to increased cybersecurity capabilities.
Final Thoughts
While the evolving landscape of data archiving fueled by emerging technologies is ultimately a good thing, it will be imperative that companies do their due diligence to ensure they are fully prepared for the changes and challenges that will emerge. This means preparing financially, having the right infrastructure to support these advanced systems and technologies, and conducting training to ensure staff fully understand how to properly utilize these systems to prevent costly errors.
