Financial Firms: Information Governance and Big Data in Conflict? by Jeff Picozzi

In the age of big data, there are wonderful new technologies available to create low-cost data lakes and conduct analytic exercises against that data. For some organizations, prior reasons they have had to eliminate data have been sidestepped, and they operate as if the keep everything forever policy has new business value. At the same time, there has been a shift toward the age of information governance (IG), the foundation of which is to keep nothing for which there is no legal, regulatory or business purpose. Managing these two policies seems to naturally pose the question, Are IG and big data at odds with one another?

Iron Mountain and PricewaterhouseCoopers recently completed their 2014 Information Risk Maturity Index survey of more than 1,800 companies. They found that on a scale of 1 to 100, the average maturity index of those surveyed was 58.8, indicating that most companies have not advanced very far on either big data exploitation or IG. The joint project highlighted IG's dilemma in the age of big data due to the fact that organizations expect to gain an information advantage through the exploration of their information but must protect it from internal and external threats. Looking at this dilemma, it is natural to ask whether typical IG goals such as defensible destruction are at odds with the goal of exploiting information for business benefit.

The short answer is no; when done properly, the age of big data is compatible with a rigorous IG strategy. The following are three reasons why that is the case:

A smaller, random sample of data can yield results that are not statistically significant from a complete sample. Some big data analytics cases may call for constant monitoring of the complete stream of all data, but most cases can be satisfied in less time and at a lower cost by looking at a proper, random sample.

The most valuable use cases in big data analytics are for predicting events in the short term. Usually, the best predictor of what will happen in the near future is what happened in the near past, not what happened decades ago. So, while there is value in keeping snapshots of prior activity, there is little value in keeping every 20-year-old transaction. Moreover, with LTO-6 tapes managed with a Linear Tape File System, those old snapshots can be maintained for long periods in low-cost tape storage facilities.

Eliminating duplicate data and content and reducing nonrelevant content reduces the time, cost and effort it takes to conduct business analytics. There are scores of copies of most data among shared applications and years or decades of daily backup tapes. Getting rid of this excess will not impede any business analytics exercise - indeed, it will improve it.

Companies or organizations that are looking to advance their big data and IG strategies should consider partnering with a third-party vendor to meet their needs.

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2014/industry/financial-services/financi...
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