With the ever-increasing growth of enterprise data, meeting compliance guidelines from regulatory bodies regarding digital files, communications, Personal Identifiable Information (PII), financial information, and financial data can be daunting, especially with the increasingly complex and interactive elements common in today’s websites.

This is where an Enterprise Information Archiving solution becomes necessary for mitigating compliance risk.

What is Enterprise Information Archiving and why is it important?

Enterprise information archiving (EIA) leverages technology to create centralized storage and organization of corporate data (examples include: file shares and website content, as well as communications such as email, collaboration app data, SMS, and social media).

EIA includes the archiving of structured and unstructured data. In the past, archives were generally made up of structured data neatly stored in databases. With the growth of unstructured data created on a variety of machines ranging from on-site terminals, work-from-anywhere laptops, and mobile devices, the need for specialized enterprise data archiving solutions is vital, so that organizations can maintain compliance with state and federal data regulations, as well as effectively manage data retention policies, while supporting their legal and human resources departments with internal investigations or eDiscovery.

Who needs to do Enterprise Information Archiving?

Any publicly-traded company, as well as businesses who are required to maintain compliance with state and federal data regulations. Some common examples include businesses in the finance, medical and pharmaceutical, insurance, food and beverage, and supply chain industries.

Enterprise Information Archiving Checklist

Understanding the various regulatory bodies that apply to your organization is the first step in compliance. But in order to properly archive, access, and audit the large and ever-growing quantities of enterprise data, it’s clear that manual processes will not be enough and that an EIA solution is necessary.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when considering Enterprise Information Archiving solutions:

Don’t forget the unstructured data – Unstructured data is the largest growing enterprise data type today and the most difficult to capture. Be sure EIA solutions are capable of archiving data from all your data sources, including both internal and SaaS systems.

Screenshot archives aren’t enough – In the past, websites and other digital information tended to be static, so screenshots might have been sufficient for compliance. But with today’s modern websites, collaboration apps, and other SaaS-based software, data is dynamic and interactive, so an EIA solution should archive the complete customer experience by crawling the entirety of a source website, locating and capturing every piece of content, including advertisements, disclosures, to create an archive which mimics the live functionality of your site, elevating the standard of evidence when reviewed in a regulatory audit.

Manual processes lead to wasted hours, human error, and hefty non-compliance fines – EIA solutions should automate previously manual tasks while satisfying regulatory demands with a complete audit trail, full metadata, and immutability. You can also seek out customizable solutions which give you the ability to precisely control and define collection parameters and retention policies, so you only capture and pay for the data needed to demonstrate compliance.

Compliance applies to the whole enterprise, not just the IT Dept – When it comes to data management and collection, IT is often viewed as the “keeper of the data” by other departments, potentially causing blind spots on actionable insights. That’s why an archiving solution that empowers independence is vital. That’s why features like automatic keyword monitoring and daily alerts help departments quickly identify and respond to compliance risks. Another must-have is the ability to easily produce and export records for sharing internally or complying with audit requests.

To learn more about how EIA can help with your compliance needs download our latest guide: Enterprise Information Archiving in the Digital Age: A Guide to Satisfying Regulatory Bodies Like FINRA, HIPAA, FDA & More

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