UK Local Authorities suffer four data breaches per day
In the US there is a legal requirement to state if public authorities suffer data breaches: this is not quite the case in the UK, so it is disturbing to discover that between April 2001 and April 2014 the UK's local government bodies suffered at least 4,236 data breaches according to this report by Big Brother Watch. &nbsp;In two-thirds of the cases no disciplinary action of any sort was taken, and in only one case did the action result in a court case.
Managing data within an organisation can involve a large number of processes, people, and policies. The more data a company produces, collates, and holds across multiple systems, the more important it is to have a robust data management strategy in place, get the most value out of it, and make the most informed business decisions.

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Data creation during the pandemic reached an all time high and, according to Statista, data – in particular data storage – is set to grow at an annual rate of around 20% over the next three years. Now with this increase being the driving force behind the majority of the world becoming digitised, a data management platform that can process and store large volumes is fundamental.

Whether you've decided to manage data in-house, or outsource it to a data management service, technology can eliminate many manual management tasks, which in turn can reduce the chance for errors. It can also limit data quality issues by incorporating a combination of functions to ensure data is accurate, accessible, and most importantly, secure.

In adopting best-in-practice data management, organisations need to cover various steps including data processing, storage, governance, formatting, and analysis, and build a foundation on which all data technology will sit.

And as part of this digital transformation, companies should include a fresh look at enterprise data management, to address questions around storing stale data, and ensure they have the most valuable data insights available.

Achieving this requires addressing three key capabilities:

Optimised data access

Enterprise data management should ensure users have seamless, secure access to whatever data they need, no matter where it may be physically stored. It also needs policy-based contextual awareness to deal with data across its lifecycle, so you're no longer storing data that no one needs.

Data visibility

Global data visibility and control of data is another crucial element, and it must be independent of any application or storage location. That means data should be visible regardless of whether it's stored on an in-house storage array or associated with a cloud-based application. There should also be absolute clarity on who has access to and ownership of all data to manage risk.

Service durability

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Enterprises need to ensure data is always protected and available by making the end-to-end service infrastructure across their different landscapes resilient, along with making sure this infrastructure can quickly rebound from any service disruption.

The unprecedented growth in data demands that organisations take a fresh look at enterprise data management. It's imperative not only to get costs under control, but to provide the sort of data visibility, resiliency, protection and optimised access that's required if enterprises are to make effective use of their data.