Data is crucial. The amount we hold continues to grow rapidly as we collect more to drive our data-driven business. However, while that data may have great value it comes with risks. It is at risk from loss, theft and is under attack from ransomware and other malicious code.
The risks around our data don’t end there. Today we operate within ever stricter regulatory frameworks to ensure all data is treated with the utmost care and attention. If It isn’t it opens us and our enterprises up to significant issues including large financial penalties.
The challenge is difficult and while technology can help to address much of it, it is not only a technical one. We need to ensure we have a strategy and approach; we need to ensure we educate our business, users, and customers about the importance of managing our data assets properly.
It is a lot to deal with. It is also something I have spent much of the last four years working on with businesses of all types, from large to small, private to the public sector, all having challenges around data governance, compliance, and security. Over that time, I have gathered quite a lot of experience about why it’s important to build a strategy and how different technology can help enable it.
For a while now I have been looking for some new approaches to help share some of this experience and help people to tackle modern data challenges and hopefully, a new series of short how-to videos may be the answer. These videos are for the tech community and designed to help address the challenges posed by modern data management.
Initially, there will be two areas of focus. In 2022 I will start a series looking at the tools available for those who have moved to Microsoft 365. Tools that provide a robust, multi-layered approach that delivers extensive compliance, governance, management and security for your data.
However, to get started I wanted to look outside of the 365 ecosystem at something that could be used anywhere. Therefore, the first set of videos is focused on gaining insight into your data across multiple repositories and how you can use that information to better manage, govern and secure your information. To help to illustrate that I also introduce a technology platform called Data Sense, developed by NetApp, it is platform-independent (i.e., you don’t have to use any other NetApp tech for it to work) simple to deploy, easy to use and very competitively priced and will help you develop better management and control.
The first three videos in the series are now live.
Part one (6 minutes) is called “Making sense of your data” and provides an overview of the challenge we face when it comes to data management and why we must tackle it. We explore high-level approaches we can take, as well as an introduction to Data Sense and why it may be an appropriate tool for you.
In part two (8 minutes), for those who want to use or try out Data Sense we look at how easy it is to get started. We go through the basics of setting it up and connecting your first data repository so you can begin to gather insight into your data and information.
In part three (9 minutes), we look at how you can start to use information from Data Sense to develop actionable insights. We explore how we can use the information discovered in our initial scans to plan for better storage efficiency, Identify security threats and begin to understand our data classifications.
Over the following weeks, we will go into more detail about exactly how you use Data Sense to better manage, understand and control your information.
These videos aim to provide practical guides and tips about the modern data challenge and introduce tools that are available to help address them. The goal is to keep them short (under 10 minutes), as bite-size references that you can use and refer to. Even if the tech we share in the videos isn’t for you, I think you will still find the concepts and examples useful to understand how technology can help address some of our biggest data challenges.
These are really the pilot episodes. So, your feedback would be helpful on whether they are clear and useful and if the format and approach to them works. Also, if you have any comments or questions you can post them here, in the YouTube comments or hit me up on Twitter @techstringy.
This is my first foray into this kind of content, I hope you find value in it, please share your feedback and if there is other content that you would like to see let me know.
Techstringy 