Use Case
Archive documents for data retention
The Problem
Documents are created daily by employees. Access is granted to internal and external parties, either via links or through collaborators. As time goes on, these documents get older and older - the information gets stale, and the access becomes risky.
While many companies have specific internal requirements for the archival of cloud-based documents, IT and Security teams lack the necessary tools to get visibility into what information should be archived. And even if they are somehow able to get visibility, they aren’t able to make changes in bulk on thousands and even millions of documents at once.
The bulk of documents at most organizations are stale. These documents haven’t been modified in years, yet they are still accessible by employees and external accounts, like personal email accounts and old vendors.
Organizations lack the ability to quickly see all of these stale documents, and cannot take action in line with data retention policies. The risk persists and only grows each day.
Additionally, companies may want to create more granular retention policies tailored for each department, but they don’t have the insight or resources to efficiently make this happen. This leads to manual work and reliance on each department in a company for help. What should be an organized, simple yet thorough process becomes a manual, incomplete fire drill - or worse yet, a “check-the-box” exercise that doesn’t actually reduce risk.
Another issue is the need for exceptions to rules. For example, certain documents might need to be exempted from being archived for legal or other reasons. The problem is there's no easy way to do this.
The Solution
An effective solution would let you gain full visibility into documents that need to be archived based on data retention policies. This system would automate and streamline the process, eliminating the need for manual labor. Every single document that was outside of retention rules could be identified and actioned upon in minutes.
The system would also offer flexibility in terms of the specific groups of individuals and documents that can be targeted. This could be accomplished through the use of customizable filtering options that allow you to archive and retain data based on predefined rules. The tool would allow you to filter data by department and apply exemptions as necessary. This ability to exempt specific individuals, organizations, or documents would give an added layer of security and control. And, employees would be able to mark exceptions too, with all exceptions trackable and controllable by administrators.
All in all, an ideal solution would provide the right level of visibility and control over your organization's data, while also reducing workload and the risk of human error through automation and filtering.