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Information Classification vs Data Classification: What's the Difference and Why It Matters

Information Classification vs Data Classification: What's the Difference and Why It Matters

Walk into any information governance meeting, and you’ll hear these terms thrown around interchangeably: “We need to classify our data.” “Our information classification policy needs updating.” “Let’s implement data classification software.” Here’s the problem: while data classification and information classification sound similar (and often get used as synonyms),Rational Review unveils Matter Agent AI for conversational e-discovery, Meeting Room with lifelike personas, au

What Is Information Governance? A Complete Introduction

What Is Information Governance? A Complete Introduction

Today’s organizations handle an overwhelming amount of data, including emails, documents, databases, images, videos, social media platforms IoT feeds, etc. Effective data management is needed for maintaining compliance, mitigating risks, and unlocking the value of data assets. And information governance is key to achieving these objectives. Although many executives recognize the need for information governance, understanding what it entails can be unclear. This guide will clarify the concept of

The Crucial Role of Data Discovery Solutions in Achieving Compliance with State-Level Privacy Regulations

The Crucial Role of Data Discovery Solutions in Achieving Compliance with State-Level Privacy Regulations

In recent years, a patchwork of state-level privacy regulations has emerged across the United States, presenting a significant challenge for organizations striving to maintain compliance. Amidst this regulatory complexity, the need for a comprehensive data inventory has become more pressing than ever. However, relying on manual efforts alone to create and maintain such an inventory can be arduous, error-prone, and time-c

Practical Techniques for Identifying Sensitive Data in Legacy Content: A Guide for Information Managers

Practical Techniques for Identifying Sensitive Data in Legacy Content: A Guide for Information Managers

Cleaning up legacy content, often referred to as ROT (redundant, obsolete, or trivial data), is a critical task for information managers. However, one of the biggest challenges they face is identifying and managing sensitive data within large repositories. With limited resources and time constraints, it’s impractical to manually review every file for sensitive content. In this ar

How To Prevent And Manage Data ROT: Practical Guidelines

How To Prevent And Manage Data ROT: Practical Guidelines

In a data-driven world, managing and safeguarding your organization’s data is critical. One of the challenges that can compromise your data’s integrity is the phenomenon known as “data ROT” - Redundant, Outdated, and Trivial data. In this article, we will explore why Data ROT could be a cause of concern and provide practical guidelines to prevent and manage data ROT effectively. Why is Data ROT a Problem?# Why should you invest time and money in removing ROT data? Because it can be detri

Information Governance Framework: Definition And Examples

Information Governance Framework: Definition And Examples

Information governance has been a cornerstone of successful businesses for years, ensuring the efficient and effective use of data to realize organizational objectives. Central to this approach is an information governance framework, a strategy that guides how businesses manage their critical data. This blog post will explain the definition of this framework and provide real-world examples to illustrate its importance. What is an Information Governance Framework?# An [information governa

5 Information Governance Best Practices For Successful Implementation

5 Information Governance Best Practices For Successful Implementation

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, information governance has emerged as a crucial tool to ensure the effective management and security of data. Yet, crafting a successful information governance strategy is no mean feat. By homing in on best practices, organizations can navigate the world of data regulation and management with confidence. Here, we discuss five such practices that are pivotal for successful implementation. Assemble a Cross-Functional Team# Your [information govern

What Are The Data Classification Levels? A Beginner's Overview

What Are The Data Classification Levels? A Beginner's Overview

Data is as valuable as currency these days, so understanding data classification levels is vital for any organization that seeks to manage its data efficiently and securely. Data classification levels serve as a framework for organizing data based on its sensitivity, value, and criticality to an organization. This guide provides a beginner’s overview of these levels, explaining their importance and how they are applied in practice. Public Data# Public data is the least sensitive level of

What Is Data Accuracy? Your Guide To Error-Free Data Handling

What Is Data Accuracy? Your Guide To Error-Free Data Handling

Data accuracy is the cornerstone of effective business decisions and legal processes. In an era where information is king, ensuring the precision and reliability of your data is a necessity. This concept becomes even more significant when it comes to Information Governance and eDiscovery, where the stakes are high, and the margins for error are minimal. Here, data accuracy is about having the right numbers and making sure that every piece of infor

Supervised Vs. Unsupervised Machine Learning: What’s the difference?

Supervised Vs. Unsupervised Machine Learning: What’s the difference?

The choice between supervised and unsupervised machine learning algorithms comes down to what you are trying to accomplish. This article explores the distinctions between these two approaches and when it is appropriate to use one or the other. Introduction to Supervised and Unsupervised Machine Learning# Machine learning, a subfield of artificial intelligence, empowers computers to learn from data and make predictions or decision

Sensitive Data Vs. Personal Data: Understanding The Distinction

Sensitive Data Vs. Personal Data: Understanding The Distinction

When it comes to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Understanding the difference between ‘sensitive data’ and ‘personal data’ is crucial for effective data management and protection. This article aims to clarify the distinction between sensitive data and personal

A Closer Look At Sensitive Data Discovery: Classification And Essential Tools

A Closer Look At Sensitive Data Discovery: Classification And Essential Tools

Sensitive data is the lifeblood of organizations across industries. It encompasses personally identifiable information (PII), financial records, intellectual property, healthcare data, and more. Effectively discovering and classifying sensitive data is vital for safeguarding against data breaches, ensuring regulatory compliance, and unlocking the value of information assets. This guide explores sensitive [data discovery](https://www.rationalenterprise.com/use-cases/information-governance/data-di

Data Governance Resolutions for the New Year

Data Governance Resolutions for the New Year

Q1 is a great time to assess, resolve, and plan for growth and improvement. In the spirit of the New Year, we’ve identified four key “New Year, New Records” data governance resolutions to strive for in 2023. 1. Get a grip on unknown data and eliminate risk.# In our dynamic corporate landscape, each year companies might change internal data systems, migrate data to new locations or to the cloud, merge or acquire other companies, adjust policy relating to department shares, conduct redun

Mitigating Growing Data Volumes: The Past, Present, and Future of Discovery

Mitigating Growing Data Volumes: The Past, Present, and Future of Discovery

Data is being created and stored at rapid rate. By 2025, the International Data Corporation (“IDC”) estimates worldwide data will reach 181 zettabytes, representing a compound annual growth rate of 23% over the 2021-2025 period. The IDC also estimates a 19.2% CAGR in worldwide storage capacity over the same period, growing to above 16ZB. For organizations, such dramatic growth of stored

Rational Insights: Discovering Secret Service Text Messages

Rational Insights: Discovering Secret Service Text Messages

Earlier this summer, we learned that the January 6th Select Committee sought to obtain Secret Service text messages on or relating to the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, only to be informed that any text messages from that timeframe were deleted across the agency. With this news, the gears in the minds of all of us in the eDiscovery world began turning, as we know there’s more than one way to recover a deleted text message. So, why aren’t common text message recovery methods a

Preventing ROT Data Accumulation with In-Place Data Governance

Preventing ROT Data Accumulation with In-Place Data Governance

Data never stops accumulating, which means that proactive measures are required to stay on top of data growth, even if you’ve just completed a ROT data cleanup. Investing in enterprise governance technology can supercharge your organization’s ability to preventing future ROT data accumulation. Information Governance platforms that empower organizations to manage data in place are especially well suited for this challenge. In-place data governance refers to analyzing, classifying, and governin

Using Technology to Identify and Delete ROT Data

Using Technology to Identify and Delete ROT Data

In last week’s article, we discussed some of the potential risks in failing to proactively manage ROT and over-retained data in a world where data is growing at an exponential rate. As promised, in this week’s article, we’ll explore some of the ways to identify, manage and delete ROT data. If managing ROT data manually without the help of software were easy and time efficient, there would

The Dangers of ROT Data and Over-Retention

The Dangers of ROT Data and Over-Retention

The amount of data stored by organizations is growing exponentially, nearly doubling in size between 2020 and 2022, according to a report from Seagate and IDC. While this data can be used to drive better business decisions, it also comes with increased risk factors. Thankfully, the notion that over-retaining data is somehow a conservative approach to data management that will minimize potential

Getting Started with Data Sensitivity Classification

Getting Started with Data Sensitivity Classification

Implementing an information governance tool to help manage sensitive data can sometimes feel like an overwhelming task. With regulations varying across jurisdictions and a bevy of new laws pending, it’s easy to find yourself in a state of decision paralysis, wondering: “where do I possibly begin?” Good news, this post was written for you! In this blog, we will propose that to begin to manage sensitive data, you should first classify data sensitivity into broad, widely applicable categories based

The CPRA – California’s New Data Privacy Mandate

The CPRA – California’s New Data Privacy Mandate

What is the CPRA?# The California Privacy Rights Act (“CPRA”) is a new state-wide data privacy bill, also known as Proposition 24, passed into law on November 3, 2020. The CPRA significantly amends and expands the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), which enforces an array of consumer privacy rights and business obligations regarding the collection and sale of personal information. In this article, we will

What is Autoclassification in Records Management?

What is Autoclassification in Records Management?

In the context of records management, autoclassification is essentially a programmable if/then statement. Many vendors tend only to emphasize the efficiencies of the “auto” part; namely, that it is transformative for a records management program to automatically categorize electronic records. However, these vendors often do not give a fair impression of the front-end work required to actually achieve automation, or in other words, to set up those if/then statements. In fact, many practiti

The Real Barrier to Successful Defensible Deletion Projects

The Real Barrier to Successful Defensible Deletion Projects

First, take a deep breath and remember that the top court in the US once went on record saying that it’s ok to delete your data, as long as you do it correctly: ‘Document retention policies,’ which are created in part to keep certain information from getting into the hands of others, including the Government, are common in business. It is, of course, not wrongful for a manager to instruct employees to comply with a valid document retention policy under ordinary circumstances.

GDPR after Brexit: Top Questions Answered

GDPR after Brexit: Top Questions Answered

GDPR after Brexit# The General Data Protection Regulation has been around for years, and you likely cannot make it through a news cycle without hearing the term “Brexit” yet, questions still abound about what they mean together. In case you missed it, the trade and cooperation agreement of 12/24/2020 outlined how data transfers will be treated going forward between the UK and the European Economic

The Devil's in the DSARs - How to operationalize your response

The Devil's in the DSARs - How to operationalize your response

Executive Summary# Do not believe that you need to spend enormous amounts of money on technology to achieve compliance Acknowledge that risk analysis is key to determine where investments are truly needed Metric tracking from the start is the most essential data for better risk analysis and process improvement Understand the rights you are afforded as a company to defend against weaponized requests Consider every DSAR request fulfillment as an audit of your response stra

Information Governance and COVID-19: How to Continue the Work

Information Governance and COVID-19: How to Continue the Work

We recently caught up with Peter Sloan, Principal and Founder of the Information Governance Group, a highly specialized law firm focusing around the toughest challenges facing information management professionals, to assess the impacts of COVID-19 and how we can adapt our solutions as industry problems rapidly evolve. TOM PREECE: With the pandemic and fallout so far, it seems some companies have been rudely awakened to the importance of proper records manage

Information Governance, Now with Concept Clustering

Information Governance, Now with Concept Clustering

Albany, NY – Rational Enterprise, a leader in Information Governance (IG) technology, announced today that it has released a beta version of Concept Clustering. Rational Governance’s implementation of unsupervised clustering will complement its already broad analytical toolset, which includes Boolean Search, Content Navigator, and supervised machine learning based on Support Vector Machine (SVM) modeling. RG’s clustering technology uncovers similarities between documents based on word fre

Rational Speaks with Kurt Wimmer of Covington & Burling on Data Privacy and Security

Rational Speaks with Kurt Wimmer of Covington & Burling on Data Privacy and Security

Tom Preece, Rational’s Business Development Manager, recently spoke with Kurt Wimmer about his thoughts on emerging data privacy and security trends and how organizations should begin to address these risks. Kurt Wimmer is the U.S. chair of Covington & Burling’s Data Privacy and Cybersecurity practice and is the immediate past chair of the Privacy and Information Security Committee of the American Bar Association’s Antitrust Section. Tom Preece: You have written in the past about h

Rational Speaks with James Sherer of BakerHostetler on E-Discovery and Information Governance

Rational Speaks with James Sherer of BakerHostetler on E-Discovery and Information Governance

Tom Preece, Rational’s Business Development Manager, recently spoke with James Sherer about his work as a litigator, author, e-discovery practitioner, and Information Governance thought leader. James Sherer is Counsel at BakerHostetler, where he co-chairs the Information Governance practice team and serves as part of the E-Discovery and Management and Privacy and Data Protection groups. His work focuses on litigation; discovery management processes; enterprise risk management; records and inform

39. Rational Speaks with Ted Augustinos of Locke Lord LLP on Information Security

39. Rational Speaks with Ted Augustinos of Locke Lord LLP on Information Security

Tom Preece, Rational’s Business Development Manager, recently spoke with Ted Augustinos, Partner at Locke Lord LLP, about his thoughts on how organizations should best address emerging trends in cyber and information security. Ted is a member of Locke Lord’s Privacy and Cybersecurity Practice Group, which assists clients in developing and enforcing data privacy and security policies to ensure compliance with the standards and practices of the industries and legal frameworks in which they operate

Rational Enterprise and [s]Cube Announce Partnership

Rational Enterprise and [s]Cube Announce Partnership

Albany, NY – Rational Enterprise (RE), a leader in Information Governance (IG) and e-Discovery technology, and [s]Cube, a provider of IT staffing and services for application development and management, announced today a strategic partnership to offer organizations a comprehensive solution for on-premises Information Governance and hosted e-Discovery, powered by Rational Governance and Rational Review. [s]Cube is creating a complete e-Discovery practice and has selected the Rational techn