Revive the archive

Making effective use of archived information will be a key factor to surviving the current financial downturn.

It's fairly clear that as businesses adapt to the economic situation, they should be looking to maximise value from current and past investments, cut costs and streamline operations. Most importantly, they need to be ensuring that when the economy recovers, the organisation is strong and robust enough to take on the competition.

What many companies don’t realise, however, is that they already hold many of the tools to success. A wealth of valuable information is contained in dusty archives, stored months or even years earlier for compliance reasons or because of its perceived value. The problem is that much of this data is now no longer easily accessible and organisations don’t know what is contained in these archives.

To put your company in a stronger competitive position, now is the time to do a thorough search of archives, determine what is still required and unlock essential information.

Taking the first step – assessing the archive

The vast majority of organisations will possess electronic archives that consist of a mix of tape and disk formats. This does not cause a problem as long as they are in good condition and the equipment and knowledge to read them still exists within the business. Tapes in particular can date back over thirty years, so it is easy to see how over time such skills and required technologies can be lost.

When accessing archives, the ideal situation is to be armed with a full inventory detailing what information is stored on what medium and where exactly it is kept. This, however, is often not the case and before any effective data mining can take place, an inventory needs to be established otherwise trying to locate documents in the future will be no easier than looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Making use of existing information

The volume of data held by companies, especially since the advent of email can be astounding. Figures available for August 2008 from the Radicati Group estimate that 1.3 billion emails are sent every day, excluding those classed as spam or viruses. When files such as contracts, market research and customer information are added, the volume of stored data soon adds up. All of this information is essential, and keeping it organised is the key to using it effectively.

Broadly, retained data will fall into one of two categories – intellectual property or to meet compliance requirements, with of course some overlap dependent on the material. Both types of data are important, but serve very different purposes. Intellectual property is clearly proprietary to a business and could include certain techniques, technology or research that bestow a competitive advantage on an organisation.

As time passes and staff move on, they are replaced by new people who may not have been informed about work that has happened prior to their arrival. To aid the transfer of knowledge within an organisation, up to date, accessible archives and inventories can help speed the transfer and preservation of knowledge. It can also safeguard against the duplication of work and provide a quick, effective way of accessing such documents efficiently, preventing unnecessary time and resource being wasted.

On another level companies have to be increasingly vigilant when it comes to compliance as over recent years, the amount of legislation governing data storage has rocketed, with record levels in 2008. Legislation is also being more readily enforced and the financial impact of fines arising from non-compliance in 2009 is a potential risk many canny organisations will seek to avoid.

Specifically, the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act which came into force in the USA in 2002 and reached UK shores last year introduced stringent rules effecting financial practice and corporate governance regulation. Accounting and auditing entities must retain all details relating to audit reports of companies for a minimum of seven years. Being able to quickly access electronic records is imperative as investigators demand all versions of documents. This legislation followed a round of highly publicised corporate scandals, including the Enron collapse. No organisation needs to be hit with a large fine and the associated negative publicity – especially when some simple preventative actions could have avoided it.

Separately, and in order to reduce the risk of exposure, companies need to ensure that confidential customer details that are no longer required, such as credit card information are removed from the archive.

The perfect opportunity

Assessing an archive does require investment, both in time and money. But the rewards are substantial; from reducing the size of the archive by deduplication to avoiding fines for non-compliance. Revisiting databases, knowledge mining and resurrecting and re-assembling knowledge will allow an organisation to find new ways of servicing its customers, whilst producing higher returns from what it effectively already knows.

After delving into the archive and assessing what it holds, it is also a good opportunity to standardise and update the format to ensure accessibility and ease of use in the future.

The coming months will provide the ideal opportunity to carry out this task and the organisations that take on this worthy activity can emerge not only more organised, but potentially leaner and better equipped to fight for survival in this period of uncertainty.

Kroll Ontrack is exhibiting at Infosecurity Europe 2009, held on 28th – 30th April at Earl’s Court, London. The event provides an unrivalled free education programme, exhibitors showcasing new and emerging technologies and offering practical and professional expertise. For further information please visit InfoSec.