September is World (and National) Clean Up Month

Welcome to September! In the spirit of World and National Clean Up Day and month – which we support – let’s not forget the digital litter strewn about your organization’s file servers and storage devices.  Just as with the real world, you may be thinking about the best way to make an impactful difference. A good place to start is identifying ROT (redundant, obsolete, and trivial) files and then deleting or archiving them. 

How Organizations Obtain ROT 

ROT is a result of individuals and organizations failing to implement and adhere to good data management practices. Good practices might include deleting old files once their lifecycle is complete, deleting duplicate versions or earlier drafts of final versions of documents, archiving old files that need to be retained, deleting temporary files created by applications, etc. 

Analyst reports vary, but one report states that 30 percent of an organization’s stored unstructured data is ROT. Another report states that 52 percent of stored unstructured data can be considered “dark data” – data with unknown value, at least a portion of which is certainly more ROT. 

A Keep Everything Culture 

When it comes to data, we tend to live in a keep everything culture. You could say that we are digital hoarders. 

It’s easy to see how everything has lined up for us to be faced with this situation. There are the obvious human behavior elements, but things like significant advancements in storage capacities, the proliferation of cloud storage, regulations that require that certain files be maintained for a set amount of time, IT personnel with no knowledge of the relevancy of the data they manage, and many other factors all lead us down a bad road. 

It’s a bad road because continuing to store ROT has real disadvantages and even risks involving data security, non-compliance with regulations and internal policies, liability, higher storage costs, and even overall productivity. Fortunately, Condrey Corporation has a solution for not only identifying ROT, but also acting on it.  

Galileo 

For identifying ROT, along with a myriad of other information you want to know about your enterprise data, there’s Galileo. Galileo inventories Windows network file systems and Microsoft 365 cloud application libraries such as Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint Online to deliver the detailed file storage intelligence you need to analyze, optimize, and secure your data for efficiency and compliance.  

When it comes to ROT, Galileo can identify irrelevant files based on when they were last modified and accessed, files without owners, specific file types such as .tmp files, duplicate files, and much more. Based on Galileo’s reports and graphical analytics, you can determine which files to clean up in your Microsoft ecosystem. 

Senergy 

With all of this information, you can then use Senergy to perform the cleanup through policies. Senergy automates data management tasks and consequently, mitigates risk in Windows Server ecosystems. Identity-Driven and Target-Driven policies in Senergy ensure that you’re always managing data assets properly. Senergy’s policies handle data privacy, rights and access analysis, data disposition, and protection of high-value targets. 

To clean up data using Senergy for example, you can create a policy that moves all files stored in selected areas that have not been accessed in three years to archive media. Or you can delete all outdated application files with a specific filename extension located in an application folder. The capabilities for data cleanup through Senergy are nearly limitless. 

Conclusion 

Good data management practices include regular data cleanup, specifically data archiving and deletion. With terabytes or even petabytes of stored data to review, the task might seem overwhelming, just like making a dent in the litter problem the physical world is facing. Fortunately, Condrey Corporation has a proven solution for easily identifying data that can be cleaned up, as well as the means of performing the actions for you.  

If you’re serious about getting your ROT identified and cleaned up, we’re ready to help you out. Fill out the form on our contact page and let’s talk.