Unstructured Data Profiling &
File Analysis
The Knowledge You Need to Recoup Storage Capacity and Manage Risk Associated with Unstructured Data

Data profiling is a process where all forms of storage and unstructured document types are analyzed and the user is provided a searchable ‘map’ of the type of information that exists, where it is located, who owns it, when it was last accessed or modified.

Data profiling relies on an enterprise class index of metadata from user files and email databases such as last modified or accessed time, number of duplicates, size, owner, location, file type, and more. Optionally data profiling can include full text indexing which would allow for keyword queries on content such as eDiscovery requests and personally identifiable information (PII) audits for social security and credit card numbers.

With this knowledge, organizations can determine the disposition on their data. This includes purging what is no longer required, allocating storage resources and costs to business units, archiving what must be preserved for legal and compliance purposes, and performing policy audits against user content.

Data profiling, sometimes called file analysis, is the foundation of today’s information governance, risk and records management strategies, and is often used for:

Remediating Legacy Data: It is estimated that anywhere from 40-to-60% of unstructured data on corporate networks has no business or legal value and can be purged. Purging legacy data will recoup significant storage capacity and save organizations the cost and resources associated with managing this data. Legacy data with no value includes ex-employee data that has not been accessed in over seven years and personal multimedia files.

Tiering Aged Data: Managing storage resources is a constant challenge because users want to save everything. A data profile can be used to find aged data, data not accessed in more than X years, and migrate it to lower cost storage resources such as the cloud.

Personally Identifiable Information (PII) Audit: When faced with a PII audit, data profiles can be utilized to determine if sensitive information such as credit card and Social Security numbers are contained within documents and email across the network.

eDiscovery and Litigation Support: Data profiles can be used to control the most expensive and time consuming aspect of eDiscovery. Using a data profile, identifying the location of files and email is simplified. When a legal hold request is made against a specific person querying the data profile report will determine the location of this content so that it can be easily preserved.

Information Governance: Data profiling supports information governance by examining unstructured data from all sources and providing insight to what data exists. By collecting metadata-level information from the content, data profiling creates searchable and reportable information about the files including owner, age, file type, location, last modified, duplicates and more so a reflective information governance policy can be created and enforced.

Utilize data profiling to recoup storage capacity and manage risk today. Call (732) 817-1060 for more information or email