Bloomberg Vault targets data fragmentation
Bloomberg's enterprise information management service, Bloomberg Vault, has added a File Analytics hybrid-cloud solution to help firms manage and secure corporate data stored in cloud-based information sharing services, such as Salesforce Files, Microsoft SharePoint and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) fromAmazon Web Services, as well as on-site file share systems.
Compliance and technology managers are swimming in a sea of corporate data fragmented across the enterprise and in the cloud. Various types of data, structured and unstructured, current and ancient, confidential and trivial, pile up in disparate on-site systems and cloud-based external file sharing and collaboration sites.
Bloomberg Vault's File Analytics promises to give these managers the capabilities they need to control and protect the sensitive and risk-heavy corporate data that frequently reside in files and documents stored on-site and in the cloud.
"Companies want to expand their use of cloud-based collaboration software because of the convenience and productivity advantages, however, firms also need to ensure that they have visibility into and control over the data stored in the cloud," said Harald Collet, Global Head of Bloomberg Vault.
"Regulatory mandates, such as the new records management guidelines in MiFID II, require firms to maintain control of corporate data so that they can archive what they need to retain, or dispose of information that is no longer needed. The fragmentation of corporate data makes that a big challenge."
Nearly 1,000 companies in financial services and other highly regulated industries use Bloomberg Vault to organize, manage and encrypt their unstructured communications such as email, instant and social messaging and voice, as well as structured trade data. Bloomberg Vault clients can add the File Analytics module to gain control over what Bloomberg calls "dark data," that is, corporate data that is difficult to identify, categorize, search for and use. File Analytics provides policy-driven and user-selective file search, analysis and archiving capabilities as well as encrypted WORM storage, a format specified by some cybersecurity and regulatory guidelines.
In addition to building out File Analytics' integration with cloud-based collaboration services, the solution now offers expanded search, reporting and analytical capabilities to streamline data discovery and compliance workflows. File Analytics integrates with Bloomberg Vault's other communications archiving, surveillance, eDiscovery and trade reconstruction capabilities.
Research firm Gartner predicts that in the next five years the number of organizations that utilize file analysis to provide visualizations of their unstructured data environments will grow 10 fold to 20 percent from less than two percent today. According to a recent report, "File analysis increases or improves operational efficiency through identification and classification of "important" and "unimportant" unstructured data, enabling organizations to optimize storage, migrate data to appropriate repositories and defensibly delete unneeded data. These actions, in turn, assist in lowering costs within IT and the organization as a whole, and, at the same time, improving employee efficiency. "