Top 5 Data Archiving Challenges and Solutions

Updated On : Dec 2022

With the explosion of diverse data produced every day, it is a challenge for companies to manage and maintain them regularly. This brings in the need for a data archival solution. Here’s a look at the various challenges enterprises face and the solution that could help overcome them.

Databases today are exploding with new data received and every new functionality introduced, and versions updated. Data archiving takes care of unnecessary information or data that is no longer actively used by removing it from the system and moving it to a separate storage system for long-term storage. It uses automated software to move data, and once archived, the data is protected. This archived data can be brought back and used at any time. Archived data typically consists of data that is important to the organization or data that must be saved for legal reasons or to comply with regulatory frameworks.

Data archiving should not be confused with data backup, as they both have different purposes. They are both forms of data protection that store data on less-expensive storage media. However, data backup helps by providing copies of active data that can be used to restore information if there has been a malfunction, corruption, loss, theft or compromise. Data archiving, on the other hand, involves data that is no longer active but is retained long term for historic, legal, or compliance purposes. Data backup is a part of data archiving. 

Advantages of data archiving

Data archiving is ideal to optimize resources and speed up their response time. It instantly transforms systems into a more productive environment.

With effective data archiving, organizations can -

• Reduce cost:
  Organizations can minimize the cost of primary storage as data is moved to less expensive, low-performance, high-capacity archive storage media. It requires very low maintenance costs to operate, besides reducing time for backup, upgrades, and database tuning. 

• Increase storage capacity:
  As the archived files are much smaller in size than the original ones, they take up less space and more data can be stored. Smaller files also take less time to restore.

• Back up quickly and easily:
  Archiving data is simple and ensures an easier backup and faster recovery rate. As the volume of data to be backed up on a regular basis decreases, organisations can reduce the cost of backup and the time required by backup solutions.

• Increase Security:
  Archiving takes care of security by removing the data and eliminating the restoration of unnecessary files, minimizing the risk of cyberattacks or data breaches. It prohibits data modification and thus prevents data loss.

• Improve regulatory compliance:
  Regardless of the industry, data archiving best practices make sure the organization stays in compliance with applicable regulations and the law.

Legal compliance. Regulatory frameworks are constantly evolving and becoming more stringent. Data archiving strategies must simplify the task of archiving data to comply with a wide variety of regulations and make it easier and less time-consuming for administrators to fulfill legal inquiries and compliance reporting requests.

Challenges & Solutions

Managing data comes with a lot of challenges. Mentioned below are some of them, along with solutions.

• Growing volume of data
  

  When the operational data within an organization keeps increasing, it gets overwhelmingly difficult to keep track of all the data sources and manage the storage in a way that it can be used later.

  Archiving data efficiently will help to identify, scale, and manage the huge amount of data without wasting administrative time.

• Legal Compliance
  

  Compliance regulations are constantly evolving, changing, and becoming tighter and more stringent.

  Adopting data archiving strategies makes it easier for organizations to comply with different regulations. This also decreases the time taken by administrators to conduct legal inquiries and compliance reporting. It is also easier for them to stay informed about changes and then review data to identify any changes in requirements.

• Data Security
  

  Protecting archived data from loss, corruption, breaches, and theft is one of the biggest challenges to tackle.

  An efficient data archiving solution takes care of that by moving data to a secure location where it is stored for the long term. It provides secure locations for storage and retrieval, when needed.

• Accessibility
  

  When some organization members need to access the archived data, they may not be able to find it easily.

  A data archiving solution enables organizations to allow access to data with role-based permissions. This lets teams easily search for and retrieve any data they may need without asking for assistance from the IT team.

• Increased Budget
  

  According to records, 69% of stored data has no value for the company. Hence, the money spent on data storage is more than required.

  Data archiving solutions help reduce the cost of storage by archiving only essential data, automatically eliminating data that no longer needs to be retained, and eliminating duplicate information.

Data archiving and retention policies take a lot of time to configure. An efficient data archiving technology minimizes the administrative burden on IT teams for managing archived data.

As databases expand with new functionalities introduced and versions updated, it takes a lot of time to backup the information and reinstate it. That is why it is essential for enterprises to adopt a data archival strategy to meet compliance regulations, retain historical data, backup and restore resources, and secure them while minimizing cost and simplifying the process.

Nelito Systems’ FinDART^TM is a top-of-the-line digital archiving solution with easy-to-use menus, processes, and configurations that can be easily managed. It has in-depth role-based access privileges and permissions to ensure full control over operations and security. To know more about the solution, write us at marketing@nelito.com or visit us here.