All-in-One Buying Guides:Storage Compliance
Storage Compliance
This guide on storage compliance covers such areas as email/document management and archiving, CAS, compliances services and legal discovery tools.
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Archiving software
Archiving software must embrace dozens, even hundreds, of file types. These can include .pdfs, documents, images, binary files, XML, HTML and IMs.
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Content-addressed storage
Content-addressed storage (CAS) enhances archival storage environments by supporting immutability. Data is stored in a fixed location on disk (the "content address") and cannot be changed once it's been written. This is a critical attribute for compliance and litigation. CAS platforms also prevent data from being deleted until its established retention period had elapsed.
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E-discovery tools
As data volumes grow, it's increasingly difficult to locate relevant data. Data must be retained longer, and storage users cannot be counted upon to intuitively locate documents, spreadsheets or other data. This is a problem when dealing with electronic discovery (e-discovery) requests that impose a legal obligation to locate relevant data in a timely manner or face fines and possibly adverse judgments. Today, e-discovery tools provide powerful search capabilities that can quickly process and index billions of files based on keywords and other common metadata.
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Email-document management and archiving
Email and file/document management is a core element of any compliance strategy, and many software tools are available to help organize, classify, migrate and secure that data so that an organization can meet compliance obligations. Each tool emphasizes some unique attributes of the compliance arena. For example, one tool might be strong in file retention and deletion, one might emphasize search and migration features, one might focus on logging and security, and one might include data reduction features. Many tools can also protect data involved in litigation, or delete data that has aged past its retention period.
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General storage compliance tool purchase considerations
Storage isn't just a matter of placing data on media. Organizations are now obliged to comply with data storage and retention requirements. Today, storage is about placing the data on storage platforms that can provide appropriate performance levels while still being cost effective for the enterprise. Data must then be stored for retention periods that are often unique to each data type, and then located quickly when the data is needed. Storage administrators have to satisfy the requirements of users, as well as address the demands of compliance auditors and litigators.
Learn more: General storage compliance tool purchase considerations