Tag: eDiscovery

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GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) Resources Are You Ready?

The new European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) go into effect in a year on May 25 2018 are you ready?

What Is GDPR

If your initial response is that you are not in Europe and do not need to be concerned about GDPR you might want to step back and review that thought. While it is possible that some organizations may not be affected by GDPR in Europe directly, there might be indirect considerations. For example, GDPR, while focused on Europe, has ties to other initiatives in place or being planned for elsewhere in the world. Likewise unlike earlier regulatory compliance that tended to focus on specific industries such as healthcare (HIPPA and HITECH) or financial (SARBOX, Dodd/Frank among others), these new regulations can be more far-reaching.

Where To Learn More

Acronis GDPR Resources

  • Acronis Outlines GDPR position

Quest GDPR Resources

Microsoft and Azure Cloud GDPR Resources

Do you have or know of relevant GDPR information and resources? Feel free to add them via comments or send us an email, however please watch the spam and sales pitches as they will be moderated.

What This All Means

Now is the time to start planning, preparing for GDPR if you have not done so and need to, as well as becoming more generally aware of it and other initiatives. One of the key takeaways is that while the word compliance is involved, there is much more to GDPR than just compliance as we have seen in the part. With GDPR and other initiatives data protection becomes the focus including privacy, protect, preserve, secure, serve as well as manage, have insight, awareness along with associated reporting.

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Multi-year Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert (and vSAN). Author of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press), as well as Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio.

Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com any reproduction in whole, in part, with changes to content, without source attribution under title or without permission is forbidden.

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO. All Rights Reserved.

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Practical Email optimization and archiving strategies

Email is a popular tool for messaging, calendaring, and managing contacts along with attachments in most organizations.

Email and messaging

Given the popularity of email and diverse ways that it is used for managing various forms of unstructured data attachments including photos, video, audio, spreadsheets, presentations and other document objects, there are corresponding back end challenges. Those back end challenges including managing the data storage repositories (e.g. file systems and storage systems) that are used for preserving and serving email documents along with enabling regulatory or compliance mandates.

Email archiving is an important enabler for regulatory compliance and e-discovery functions. However there is another important use for E-mail archiving which as a data footprint reduction (DFR) technique and technology enables storage optimization, being green and supporting growth while stretching budgets further. There is after all no such thing as a data or information recession and all one has to do to verify the trend is to look at your own email activity.

Industry Trend: Data growth and demand

There are however constraints on time, budgets and demands to do more while relying on more information and email has become a central tool for messaging including social media networking, handling of attachments and means to manage all of that data.

DFR enables more data to be stored, retained, managed and maintenance in a cost effective manner. This includes storing more data managed per person, where when the additional data being retained adds value to an organization. Also included is keeping more data readily accessible, not necessarily instantly accessible, however but within minutes instead of hours or days depending on service requirements.

Data footprint reduction (DFR) techniques and technologies

Here is a link to a recent article that I did presenting five tips and strategies for optimizing e-mail using archiving.

Hopefully many of you will find these to be common sense tips being implemented, however if not, now is the time to take action to stretch your resources further to do more.

In general email optimization tips include:

  • Set policies for retention and disposal
  • Establish filters and rules
  • Index and organize your inbox
  • Archive messages regularly
  • Perform routine cleanup and optimization
  • Leverage cloud data protection services and solutions

When it comes to archiving projects, walk before you run, establish success to build upon for broader deployment of E-mail archiving by finding and address low hanging fruit opportunities.

Instead of trying to do to much, find opportunities that can be addressed and leveraged as examples to build business cases to move forward.

By having some success stories and proof points, these can be used to help convince management to support additional steps not to mention getting them to back your polices to achieve success.

An effective way to convince management these days is to show them how by taking additional Email archiving steps you can support increased growth demand, reduce costs while enhancing productivity not to mention adding compliance and ediscovery capabilities as side benefits.

You can read more here and here, ok, nuff said for now.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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Supreme Court Rules Sarbox intact, Oversight Board Changes


Today the US Supreme Court ruled on a Nevada case involving constitutionality of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley (Sarbox) accounting regulations pertaining to appointments to the independent public company accounting oversight board.

The Supreme Court ruled that the Sarbox regulations or law remains intact, however the process or controls around the oversight board must change.

My interpretation and perspective from reading a few different reports is that Sarbox as you know and love (or hate) it is essentially still intact. However what has changed or will be is that individual board members can now be removed or at least in an easier manner. Instead of the request to strike down the Sarbox regulations, the Supreme Court instead appears to have left the regulations intact instead ruling that board members can be changed or removed.

What does this all mean?

Perhaps not much other than firms who have been making money on Sarbox now having something else to talk or consult about (Hmmm, a Sarbox stimulus?).

On the other hand, with the ability to have Sarbox board members more easily removed, perhaps we will see a new board installed that could influence the thinking and thus applicability of Sarbox activity.

Near term, I can see this as being non news for some, and for others, confusion and lets not forget that in chaos or confusion there is opportunity.

Here are some links to read more

  • US Supreme Court website and other news
  • Supreme Court to Hear Challenge to Accounting Board
  • Court Strikes Down Part of Sarbanes-Oxley

    • Nuff said about this for now, whats your take?

    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

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    StorageIO Spring Keynote and Speaking tour V2.008

    Several new keynote and speaking engagements involving myself have been added to the StorageIO events page including among others:

    April 8th, 2008 – SNW Orlando FL
    Beyond Green-Wash:
    IT Data Center Power, Cooling, Floor Space and Environmental (PCFE) Topics and Trends V2.008
    This talk will move past what are the issues and reasons for going green and get right to the point of what you can do today leveraging various technologies, techniques and best practices to address PCFE and green environmental issues including EHS, low power and economic sustainment in an environmental friendly manner as well as what to include in a long term green strategy for your data center.

    Chicago, May 13th-15th – StorageDecisions
    Clustered Storage:
    From SMB, to Scientific, to Social Networking and Web 2.0
    The growth of structured and unstructured data continues at an explosive rate in most environments resulting in a constantly expanding data footprint requiring data and storage management resources. Similarly, the relative ease of use of NFS and Windows CIFS file sharing based storage, also known as Network Attached Storage (NAS), has led to a proliferation of NAS and Windows file servers which are not all that different from how the ease of use of personal computers (PCs) resulted in desktop and server sprawl. With the focus of many IT organizations today to do more with less, or, do more with what you have, clustered storage and clustered file serving have become a popular option to support modular, scalable and flexible growth. Clustered storage including clustered file serving, grid and web 2.0 based storage solutions are no longer confined to the specific high performance scientific applications they are commonly associated. Clustered storage serving is commonly being deployed to support a wide diversity of applications including commercial, entertainment or media, Web 2.0 and social networking along with grid, cloud and traditional scientific needs.

    This session takes a look at among other topics:
    ? Look at what different clustered storage vendors are claiming and how their solutions differ
    ? Fact vs. Fiction, Myths and Realties of clustered storage
    o Grid vs. Clusters, Cluster vs. Grid, what?s the differences
    o Clustered storage is only for ultra large environments like Google
    o Clustered file serving is only for high performance (HPC) environments
    o SMBs and bulk storage applications can not benefit from clustered storage
    ? What are the caveats to be aware of when deploying clustered storage?
    ? What are some emerging trends and solutions to keep an eye on for clustered storage
    ? What are some questions that some vendors do not want you to ask about their solutions!

    Green and Environmental Friendly Storage:
    Practical Ways to Achieve Energy Efficiency
    Green is in-and every storage vendor out there has a green story to tell. Despite the vendor and industry hyperbole about the environmental benefits of their products, there are still no standard metrics by which to measure and compare power consumption or energy efficiency claims. The challenge is sorting out and closing the gap between vendor green messaging and IT data center issues including power, cooling, floor space and other environmental topics including RoHS and e-waste disposal. This session looks at several practical techniques and technologies that you can leverage today to achieve an energy efficiency data center to sustain business growth in an economical and ecological friendly manner.

    Topics that will be covered include among others:
    ? How truthful are vendor claims and what is ?Green wash?
    ? Facts and Fiction, Myths and Realities:
    o Storage is cheaper to buy than to power
    o Power avoidance vs. energy efficiency
    o Are Solid State Devices (SSD) the silver bullet?
    o Dedupe vs. Archive vs. Compression vs. Consolidation
    ? What?s real and achievable today, what are your options?
    ? Measuring and determining energy efficiency with emerging metrics
    ? How to do more with what you have and avoid forklift upgrades
    ? Who is the ?Greenest of them all? and where to learn more

    I will also be keynoting at several TechTarget seminar series events around the U.S. including
    StorageIO events page located here.

    Cheers
    GS