Symantec claims its new Data Insight technology enables organisations to improve data governance through insights into the ownership and usage of unstructured data , including files such as documents, spreadsheets and emails.

Symantec Data Loss Prevention is planned to be the first solution to fully integrate Data Insight followed by storage and information management solutions later this year.

Unstructured data on shared file systems is a large source of critical business information, and over-exposed content presents a significant risk for data breaches. Data Insight with Symantec Data Loss Prevention helps organisations identify their most critical information and enables simplified data clean-up and remediation through automated data owner identification.

Data Insight also provides continuous monitoring and auditing of data usage to help ensure adherence with corporate policies and regulatory compliance. In addition, the technology monitors who has accessed or modified individual files, and can notify information security teams and data owners that data has been exposed. Armed with visibility into who is accessing and using the information, organisations can make rule-based ownership inferences and alter access to stored data in order to prevent data breaches.

“Organisations are struggling with multiple point solutions to manage and secure their unstructured data and need products to work together to solve problems,” said Greg Hughes, group president, Enterprise Product Group, Symantec. “Data Insight makes life easier for our customers by combining our security and storage prowess to improve data governance.”