Creating a data protection strategy for your organization is a little bit like selecting the right insurance policy for your home. It isn’t the most flashy of endeavors and nobody likes paying those insurance premiums, but when a hurricane rips the roof off your house, you’re glad that you took the time to do it right.
Structuring your data protection strategy is not exclusively an IT decision. It’s primarily a business decision involving a range of stakeholders (not just IT) which provides the products, solutions and processes to execute that strategy based on the value of the data and the objectives of the business.
Data protection is not a one-size-fits-all process, as we in EMC IT, have come to learn. The following are best practices and lessons learned that EMC IT uses to create and maintain our data protection strategy.
Start with critical stakeholders
Whether you’re putting together a new data protection strategy or updating an existing one, all the stakeholders with an interest in the data need to have a seat at the table. Most importantly, that includes the business group that owns the data and IT, but also should include representative(s) from legal, the compliance department, engineering and executives who support the effort. These stakeholders will make decisions not just about the high-level, near-term protection and retention of the data, but also about requirements that will impact the business long term.
Odds are you won’t be starting your data protection strategy from scratch. Most organizations have many legacy data practices that have evolved into protection requirements. Oftentimes organizations don’t consider what their needs will be 25 years out while they set up these protection solutions. Data Protection strategy should include an initial cadence of review and audit and allow for adjustments as the needs of the business change and grow.
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