Storage Resource Management
Information Lifecycle Management
Regulatory requirements, such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA,
mandate how long data must be retained and who has access to
that data. Regulatory requirements are one of the key drivers for
ILM solutions because they are complex and can be very costly to
implement without automation. Many businesses simply retain all
data, which is ultimately just as costly.
The part about retention and removal used to be the business decision but
now you have legislation and compliance issues to consider.
(emails, employment records, healthcare records – all have to be kept for
different lengths of time depending on the legislation).
Sometimes you get conflicting instructions on the same set of data.
i.e. employment records have to be kept for 6 years in the UK. However Data
Privacy states that certain information has to be deleted within 90 days. So all
of a sudden you have the same set of information but conflicting legislation.