Veritas Technologies has released the Integrated Classification Engine, a new technology that enables organisations to quickly scan and tag data to ensure that sensitive or risky information is properly managed and protected.

Organisations today struggle with gaining visibility and insight into their fastest growing data -- unstructured data. This type of data - including emails, documents and image files - exposes organisations to potentially harmful security vulnerabilities and unintended personally identifiable information (PII) leaks. This problem is expected to intensify as enterprise data growth has accelerated to a rate of 49 percent year-over-year, according to the 2017 Veritas Data Genomics Index.  

The Integrated Classification Engine provides broad visibility into PII and helps companies meet compliance regulations that require discrete retention policies be implemented and enforced across the organisation's entire data estate -- regardless of where that data lives.

This new technology is available now in Veritas Data Insight 6.0 and will be available with Veritas Enterprise Vault 12.2 in August. Future integrations are planned across the Veritas data protection, storage and governance portfolio.

The Integrated Classification Engine has capabilities that help organizations achieve compliance with strict data protection requirements worldwide, like the European Union's forthcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) . Specifically, the Integrated Classification Engine can locate where PII exists across an organization's data landscape and drive actions that help enterprises appropriately retain and delete this data, both critical and challenging aspects of the GDPR.

According to findings from the first phase of the The Veritas 2017 GDPR Report , nearly 40 percent of respondents are worried their organization cannot accurately identify or locate data in a short time frame, a mandate of GDPR.

The Integrated Classification Engine includes more than 100 pre-configured patterns for recognition of credit card and social security numbers, medical records and other PII. It also comes pre-loaded with more than 60 different policies for GDPR, HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulations around the globe to accelerate compliance readiness. Additional features include a dictionary that identifies risky keywords that suggest improprieties, as well as confidence-scoring and quality assurance tools to minimise false positives.

"Classification technology is a critical tool for organisations that need broad visibility into PII and want to retrieve specific information quickly in order to address GDPR," said Mike Palmer , executive vice president and chief product officer, Veritas.

"Manual processes are often unenforceable, laborious and inconsistent. However, by incorporating modern classification technology across our portfolio, Veritas is leapfrogging the market with a new approach to data management that makes sensitive data easier to find, redundant and stale data easier to delete, and allows organisations to make more informed decisions."

Veritas says Data Insight 6.0 takes a significant step forward in delivering risk analytics by triangulating insights from content classification, metadata analytics and user behaviour to quickly uncover potential bad actors or malicious activities. Data Insight's proprietary "User Risk Score" is the first-line of defence for identifying suspicious activity and initiating remediation efforts to keep sensitive files protected.

Data Insight 6.0 introduces deep learning technology that incorporates the User Risk Score and other file attributes to hunt for an organisation's riskiest files and recommend next steps. By using artificial intelligence to prioritize how the Integrated Classification Engine scans files, Data Insight 6.0 can dash through petabytes of data to illuminate the darkest of data. Data Insight 6.0 is available today from Veritas and its worldwide channel partners.

Veritas Enterprise Vault 12.2 enables administrators to infuse their archive with intelligence by reclassifying all of their existing content with consistent patterns and policies delivered via the Integrated Classification Engine. The solution aligns the classification tags with retention policies to ensure that all critical data is managed appropriately, while the "junk" can be deleted within the normal course of operations.

Enhanced classification capabilities provide the foundation for accelerated investigations by making it easier to search for content using classification tags and expediting the process of responding to discovery or information requests to address compliance regulations. Enterprise Vault 12.2 will be available in August through Veritas and its worldwide channel partners.

"As data growth reaches Exabyte proportions, organisations have become overwhelmed by mostly unstructured 'dark' data that is redundant, stale or of radically varying quality," said Jason Buffington , principal analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group.

"The Integrated Classification Engine introduced by Veritas today is designed to provide a substantial leap forward for companies needing to achieve governance, risk management and compliance through actionable intelligence on what data exists, who owns it and has access to it, and how it is being used."