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This task is very complicated as organizations create multiple copies of nonproduction data for development purposes. Tracking the copies becomes unwieldy, especially if engineering resources are geographically separated from product teams or if the work is outsourced to contractors. While database admins make copies to test new application upgrades or features, the downstream risk may manifest itself in the theft of a laptop that has a copy of the information because of the lack of processes and control over the extra data sets.
The trend to outsource application and database development, coupled with the retention of more information to meet record-retention regulations such as HIPAA, exacerbates the security risk. There are also significant costs associated with constantly copying data. More storage is required to keep the information and all copies of a database are typically backed up nightly. Storage and tape costs can get out of hand if there are an excessive number of database copies to be kept and protected.
The benefits of database archiving
One collaborative opportunity for the storage and database groups is database archiving, which can manage and store database information more efficiently and securely. Database archiving products can create a subset of a database; subsetting is used to truncate, insert or delete data from the original database. By creating a smaller database, organizations can reduce storage capacity while maintaining enough data to complete application development and testing.
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