In Focus

Mobile Usage Raises Information Governance, Data Security Concerns

Global mobile data traffic grew 2.3-fold in 2011, more than doubling for the fourth year in a row, according to the “Cisco® Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update.”

The report also showed that last year’s mobile data traffic was eight times that of the entire global Internet in 2000.

Amy Lanter, Managing Editor

Bookmark and Share

Here are various milestones Cisco® is predicting:

  • The number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the world’s population in 2012.
  • More than 100 million smartphone users will use more than 1 GB per month in 2012.
  • Monthly global mobile data traffic will surpass 10 exabytes (approximately 10 billion gigabytes) in 2016.

All of this represents quite a challenge for records professionals. With the explosion of mobile technology, records are now stored across platforms, including the cloud. This makes data security one of the main challenges. At the same time the amount of data is increasing, control over it is decreasing.

To succeed, then, organizations must have a plan to deter hackers, safeguard proprietary information, and keep the integrity of their information intact.

In this issue of Information Management (IM), our authors address this need for vigilance when it comes to mobile technology. “Ready or not, the use of smartphones has thrust RIM onto a new playing field, where a radical change in game plan is mandated, but the playbook is still incomplete,” writes Nancy Dupre Barnes, Ph.D., CRM, CA, and Frederick Barnes, J.D, in “Smartphone Technologies Shine Spotlight on Information Governance.”

Gordon E.J. Hoke, CRM, addresses how organizations are facing an ever-increasing challenge to maintain long-term accessibility to the growing volume of electronic records. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, he writes; it requires a unique combination of tools, policies, procedures, and compromise.

Compromise also comes into play in the GARP® Series article “IT’s Most Important Role: Ensuring Information Technology” by Patrick Cunningham, CRM, CIP, FAI. His article, though, describes how to ensure that there are no compromises when it comes to IT systems.

A compromise of administrative accounts, he writes, can allow unauthorized accounts and unauthorized access to accounts, so these must be regularly audited. With electronically stored information under intense scrutiny by courts and regulators, this is one way IT can help ensure the organization’s ability to produce records that are authentic and reliable.

To ensure effective information governance, implementing a scala-ble taxonomy is important, states Eugene Stakhov. The core concept of taxonomy is the same across disciplines: in the same way that a child subclass inherits characteristics from a parent class in a biological taxonomy, document characteristics, including metadata, security, and, in some cases, retention requirements, are inherited in a content taxonomy. So, a good taxonomy makes identifying where documents belong easier.

Also in this issue, Deborah H. Juhnke, CRM, reviews a book on finding hidden ROI in information, and Lee Nemchek, CRM, critiques a book about managing records to mitigate risks.

If you have suggestions or comments, please forward them to editor@armaintl.org.