A lot of companies choose to move their data to the cloud instead of on-premise data storage due to cost concerns. And then there are some companies who consider factors like the amount of data they have and the accessibility factor related to it. Having said that; cloud is considerably easier to access and it can also store huge amount of data with minimum efforts.
That is why the decision to shift to the cloud is a very important decision to make based on the kind of data you have. You can classify, move and then identify the data anomalies.
We have listed below some key tips to make sure your transition to the cloud helps with cost saving while alleviate data risks.
1. Know what data you have
Start by classifying the data. Get a very good idea of the kind of data you have. According to Gartner the approximate cost of storing and managing 1PB data is $5M. So be sure of the amount of dark data you have, because sending dark data to the cloud would be misusing the space and wasting cloud resources. 41% of dark data is “stale” meaning it’s not been modified in more than 3 years. 15% is “ancient” meaning it has not been modified or touched in 7 years. It’s very important to be thorough at this first step and understand your data composition and classify it accordingly.
2. Know where your data is
Be aware of the data you have in your possession and the location of the data. This would be extremely helpful to prepare yourself for any data protection laws and regulations like GDPR in 2018. This will also help you better to strategize with data management. And set up information governance policies that will help to ensure compliance to GDPR and other regulations.
3. Know who is accessing your data
You need to gain a very good understanding of how your data is being used and identify the patterns of this data usage. This will help you prepare against cyber-attacks. Visibility around the data will give you the ability to analyze the user activity around the data. Start by etching a baseline around data usage and basis that identify outliers and anomalies to get one step closer to predicting risk.
You need to understand that Global Data Visibility is very critical and crucial. At present 74% of organizations manage data across multiple public IaaS platforms and the standard enterprise has more than 900 various cloud-hosted applications which serve different functions. This further presses the need for visibility.
Want more tips and suggestions on moving your data to the cloud? Click the link below to watch a quick video and to download the whitepaper. 3 Things to Know Before Moving Your Data to the Cloud
