Use Case: Education Industry

AT A GLANCE

• Increased associated vulnerabilities
• Reducing cost of duplicate and redundant data storage
• ML Identification of ROT
• Automated AI discovery and reporting of ROT
• Both AI and EUC Classification of all data
• Granular Closed Loop Remediation
• Audit Trail within one platform

‍

Data Challenges for Education organisations

In 2024 and beyond, education organisations face a multitude of data challenges as they navigate the ever-changing landscape of technology and learning needs. Data privacy and security remain paramount, with the need to protect sensitive student and staff information and adhere to data protection regulations like GDPR and CCPA. Ensuring robust cybersecurity measures and educating stakeholders on data security best practices is essential.

Data integration poses another significant hurdle as educational institutions use various systems for different functions, making the seamless flow of data between complex and time-consuming. Data quality, analytics, and business intelligence are crucial for informed decision-making, necessitating investment in the right tools and expertise.

Equity in data access is vital, and education organisations must balance transparency and decision support with student privacy concerns. Clear data governance policies, addressing student consent, and updating infrastructure are critical components of effective data management.

Legacy systems and the digital divide pose additional obstacles, while evolving pedagogical methods and personalised learning require sophisticated data analysis. As education organisations adapt, they should prioritise agile data management, security, and analytics to harness the power of data for enhancing educational outcomes. Collaborative efforts with data experts and industry partners may prove invaluable in addressing these challenges, ensuring that education remains adaptive and data-informed in the dynamic landscape of 2024 and beyond.

‍

The Need for the Removal of ROT

ROT data, which stands for “redundant, outdated, and trivial” content, refers to information stored within an enterprise that is no longer necessary or useful. This type of data includes redundant information that is duplicated in various places across systems, both locally and in the cloud. With the rise of cloud-based applications, remote work, and collaboration tools, employees often generate ROT by repeatedly saving multiple copies of data, outdated content, and unneeded information without proper oversight.

ROT data is dispersed throughout an organisation, existing on individual desktops, network servers, SharePoint, on-site storage, and cloud repositories. Analysts at Gartner have reported that in many cases, over 70% of corporate data is redundant across the organisation. Addressing ROT by reducing unnecessary data storage can lead to cost savings, decreased data-related risks, and improved compliance, with the potential to cut data storage costs by up to 80%.

The challenges associated with ROT data encompass several critical issues for organisations. These include a significant and continually rising cost of data storage, as redundant and unnecessary information accumulates over time. Additionally, there are increased regulatory risks, particularly concerning data protection regulations like CCPA and GDPR, which require stringent management of sensitive data. The proliferation of ROT data poses higher data security risks, necessitating robust security measures to safeguard information effectively. Maintenance and data governance costs also increase as organisations grapple with the management and cleanup of ROT data. The ease of creating and replicating ROT data at scale further compounds these problems, emphasising the importance of proactive data management and cleanup strategies.

The key challenge specific to education orgainations in dealing with ROT data include discovering and locating this data spread across various locations, devices, and formats, as well as accurately identifying which files qualify as ROT at scale. Efficient management of ROT is essential for streamlining data and optimising data storage resources.

‍

Getvisibility Solution Suite

The Getvisibility solution suite helps to identify, manage, and report on legacy ROT in a complex and fast-moving environment such as an education organisation. Getvisibility solutions will identify all ROT for archiving or deletion, and it will also help organisations stay on top of their ROT data on an ongoing basis with automated policy implementation with EUC (End User Control) in both an agent and agent-less solution.

This is done so by Getvisibility using innovative Al and Machine Learning to perform the following:

1. Automatically discovers all data in a data ecosystem.
2. Tracks the creation of new data.
3. Classifies all unstructured data and indexes the metadata and content.
4. Identifies ROT data within its classification and metadata analysis.
5. Builds granular remediation files.
6. Generates a legally defensible audit trail about these activities.

‍

The Getvisibility solution for data de-duplication and ROT control is a solution for the main challenges that organisations face with ROT:

1. Unstructured data search and classification at scale.
2. No unified view of data across multiple environments and file types.

‍

GRC and ROT Data Governance and Compliance, Getvisibility solution suite provides a clear view of an organisation's unstructured data compliance posture using detailed reports and dashboards.

The Getvisibility reporting suite sits within our data policy and reporting solution Data Guard. Getvisibility Data Guard allows a data policy to be created that is specific to the organisation's data structures, needs, and business owners. The data policy, stakeholder management, dashboard reporting, and direct data alerts are all accessed via one platform. They set up an automation of continuous compliance is done through three simple steps and can be completed by a large organisation within a week.

The Getvisibility reporting suite provides information on key areas of risk regarding users, groups, passwords, and access permissions. In addition to ROT reports others include but are not limited to sensitive personal or IP data files, access permissions, duplicate files, and data risk assessments based on an organisation's data policy.