One of the most significant business qualities is developing a long-term data management plan. Identifying your data preservation requirements and choosing the right data solution takes a lot of time and work.
Data archiving is the storage of unaltered data for the purpose of long-term retention and possible subsequent use. It is a method of data backup for data that is infrequently accessed yet still important.
A data archival solution can help you save money on storage by archiving less-used data. The requirements for data archiving range from one company to the next. But first and foremost, you must comprehend the criteria for archival storage.
Reasons for archiving data
The reasons for data retention vary widely; nonetheless, data retention may be divided into three groups.
Compliance
To meet regulatory and audit requirements, data recorded in a compliance archive category is kept. Data is archived for compliance purposes and stored as part of a company’s record management, risk management, and compliance preparation plan.
Emails, messages, files, social media records, business documents, and other information are all examples of compliance archive data. These data are only accessed on rare occasions and only when an audit or request is made.
Analytics
The analytics archive category contains data that is utilized for reporting and analysis. Analytics archive data is used more frequently than compliance and historical archives. In general, the volume of data is greater, and you may want analytical archiving solutions to properly retrieve the data.
History
Data preserved in the historical category is kept on file as a business record. Large amounts of material that can’t be removed for different business reasons fall into this kind of data. Rarely are historical archives accessible. To save these records, you’ll need a cost-effective and dependable solution.
The types of archived electronic data
Electronic records and electronic data come in many different forms. Today, many electronic records, such as e-mail, word processing documents, calendar entries, instant messages, and links between documents are available only in electronic form or digital form. These are some types of records that you may need to retain, preserve, or archive:
Metadata
Metadata is data about data. It provides information about data resources, their use, and behavior. A good definition of metadata is structured information that describes data.
Metadata is typically captured, stored, and managed by a data archive system and is used for the organization and retrieval of archived data. Metadata typically includes information such as who created the data, when it was created, how the data was created, the type of data, etc.
Emails
Email archiving is the process of storing, securing, indexing, and retrieving email messages for a predetermined period of time. When an email is stored using an email archiving solution, a copy of it is automatically sent to the central email archive.
Data from emails can be archived for regulatory compliance, free up storage space, or for eDiscovery.
Transactional Data
Transactional data is the data that a system captures when it processes transactions. This data is captured for record-keeping purposes and is typically stored on non-volatile storage. Example: data captured by a point-of-sale system
Text messages
Text messages sent through SMS, instant messaging (IM), or social media messaging (SMM), are often sent and received on smartphones, and these need to be archived securely before allowing users to delete them.
Webpages, websites, and other digital content
Webpages, websites, and other digital content are hard-to-archive forms of digital assets. Similar to emails, snapshots of web pages need to be captured and stored before they can be archived.
Usually, a crawler will go through a website and archive it, and this process needs to be tested to avoid archiving duplicates or broken links.
Files, documents, and databases
Today, most files are created and stored in digital form and are often created on computers through applications like spreadsheet software and word processing software.
Since many computer files are binary, they are often not viewable and usable by people without special knowledge. Archiving these files requires the use of special software.
System Logs
System logs are files stored on a computer system that record events or activities on that system. Usually, system logs provide a history of events, such as crashes or hardware/software changes, that have taken place.
Legacy Data
Legacy data is the data that was generated in a previous system or software version and needs to be migrated to the current software version.
Legacy data is typically old data, but the term is sometimes used to refer to data that is unassociated with a current database system, or data that has been archived for long-term storage.
Conclusion
There are many more data types and data categories than we’ve discussed. But you can see why it’s so important to take a look at your company’s long-term data management plan. With this plan, you’ll be able to find solutions that suit you, so you’ll be able to archive the data that’s important to you.
